Campus Life

Texas A&M Joins Rare Books World As Major Player

Most of the 4 million volumes in the Texas A&M University Libraries are readily available to students, faculty and staff on campus and elsewhere, but a growing number of books are quite rare.
May 21, 2009

Most of the 4 million volumes in the Texas A&M University Libraries are readily available to students, faculty and staff on campus and elsewhere, but a growing number of books are quite rare. These volumes attract scholars and researchers from throughout the nation – and require special handling.

Such is the two-volume acquisition that prompted Nicholas Basbanes, an award-winning author, journalist and rare-books specialist to declare the university has joined the rare books world as a major player. Basbanes spoke at Texas A&M’s celebration of its 4 millionth volume, which focused on what he called “the exceedingly rare copy” of the almost 400-year-old Barcelona edition of “Don Quixote de la Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes. The 1617 edition is the first to include both parts of “Don Quixote,” which Basbanes describes as “the world’s most consequential work of fiction.”

The two-volume “Don Quixote” joins a growing array of special collections in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. The elegantly renovated Cushing Library initially housed all the university’s holdings but is now dwarfed by the adjacent and massive Sterling C. Evans Library, where most of the general collections are found.

“In addition to the splendid rare book holdings, the Cushing Library houses both the written and visual history of the university from its very beginnings in 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas,” explains David Chapman, director of the Cushing Library. The collections there reflect the university’s diversity of interests and strengths dating back through its early history. The addition of the 1617 “Quixote,” for example, fits well into the existing “Eduardo Urbina Cervantes Project Collection.” Urbina, professor of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M, approached Cushing Library with the idea of building a physical collection in support of his Cervantes Project and Digital Archive (http://dqi.tamu.edu). The collection is now noted as one of the broadest and most important Cervantes collections in the world, with a focus on illustrated editions. This rare edition of Don Quixote joins the Cervantes Project as the centerpiece of the growing collection which currently comprises 1,065 titles and 2,500 volumes in 25 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian and Yiddish.

Urbina describes it as the first great Cervantes collection of the 21st Century and the first rare book collection of its kind born digital. It has a fully accessible and documented online index supported by a digital archive of 25,000 illustrations. Even Thomas Jefferson, an avid collector of books who had multiple editions of Don Quixote in four of the libraries that he built, would be impressed.

Thanks to the generosity of Sara and John Lindsey ’44, Texas A&M owns the only complete copy of this edition to be found in a North American university library. Basbanes notes it is even scarcer than the Gutenberg Bible since copies of the latter can be found in 12 American institutions. The Lindseys of Houston have contributed to all the millionth milestone volumes, which are housed in the Cushing Library.

The 4 millionth volume signals Texas A&M’s ascent into the rare books world with more to come, according to library officials. Cushing Library also houses the Africana Collection containing family papers, oral histories and extensive photographic collections.

The Robert L. Dawson French Collection contains more than 15,000 printed titles and 5,000 manuscripts for the study of the 18th Century and its influence on European culture generally.

The John Donne Collection includes books by and related to the notable 17th-century metaphysical poet. In fact, officials say the library can claim a noteworthy place among the world’s repositories of primary Donne editions and contemporaneous background materials.

Other collections of rare books and materials include The Jeff Dykes Range Livestock Collection, The History of Science Collections, The Mary and Mavis P. Kelsey Americana Collections, The Loran L. Laughlin Collection of Antiquarian Books, The Sara and John Lindsey Millionth Volume Project, The Al Lowman Printing Arts Collection and Research Archive, The Mexican Colonial Collection, The Ragan Military Collection, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection and Texas A&M University Archives. For more on each of these collections, go to http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/collections.

The Cushing Library itself has a long history at the university. Named in honor of Col. Edward Benjamin Cushing, a member of Texas A&M’s Class of 1880, it opened on Sept. 22, 1930 as the first building on campus constructed solely as a library. Founded in 1876, at one point Texas A&M was in danger of becoming a branch campus of the University of Texas and was rescued from that fate by E. B. Cushing, who used his influence and provided financial backing to keep the state’s first public institution of higher education from slipping into obscurity.

Following the construction of a new library in 1968, Cushing Library served various purposes including, in 1974, housing the University Archives. In the 1990s it underwent a major renovation and became home to the university’s collections of rare books, manuscripts, art, special research collections and archives.

Media contact: tamunews@tamu.edu.

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