Harry Ransom Center
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HARRY RANSOM CENTER P.O. Drawer 7219 Austin, TX 78713-7219 www.hrc.utexas.edu Annual Report 2015–2016 Contents 2 A Note from the Director 3 At a Glance 5 Fostering Research and Learning 6 Research 8 Fellowships 9 Researcher Publications 10 Teaching with the Collections 12 Internships 13 Digital Collections 15 Engaging the Public 16 Exhibitions 18 Collection Loans 19 Ransom Center Publications 20 Programs 21 Membership 21 Volunteers 23 Supporting and Enhancing the Collections 24 Acquisitions 26 Preservation and Conservation 27 Cataloging 29 Staff 30 Financials 31 Donors 32 Advisory Council 2 A Note from the Director This annual report for 2015–2016 offers an impressive record of service to the communities we serve. While the Ransom Center’s support for original scholarship remains unparalleled, the Center also excels in interpreting the University’s most valuable cultural assets for broad and diverse audiences. Nowhere, however, has the growth in programs been more dramatic than in our service to the University’s undergraduate and graduate students. While the Ransom Center collections stimulate and inspire, our aim is also to advance greater visual literacy and to teach critical research skills that will prepare our students well for a lifetime of learning. As strong as these initiatives are, the Ransom Center’s largest audience will always be the future one. With an eye to that future we have spent the past year developing a building master plan to identify our needs and plan for the next 20 years of growth in both programs and collections. Just what will the Ransom Center look like in 2036 and beyond, and what modifications to our physical spaces will be required to realize that future? We’ve been aided in this work by the architectural firm Cooper Robertson, by colleagues from the University’s Office of Campus Planning, and by committed members of the Ransom Center’s Advisory Council. In the coming years we will work to advance this building master plan to create spaces to accommodate our growing teaching initiatives and to enable new forms of digital innovation. We will create a state-of-the-art conservation laboratory and improved preservation environments that will protect the University’s investment and significantly extend the life of the rare and fragile materials in our care. My colleagues and I are proud of the work that has been accomplished, and we look forward to advancing the University’s teaching, research, and public service mission for many years to come. STEPHEN ENNISS, DIRECTOR [email protected] 3 AT A GLANCE 2015–2016 VISITORS 68,498 50,252 8,238 5,990 4,018 Total visitors Exhibition attendance Students visiting Researcher visits Program attendance with classes RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION 49 states and 24 countries 70 1,181 Researchers’ geographic origins Research fellowships Collection items conserved awarded ONLINE PRESENCE ONE MILLION, ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-THREE 47,662 THOUSAND, AND 147,684 Online digital collection items THREE HUNDRED Social media followers THIRTY-NINE Unique website visitors FUNDRAISING AND MEMBERSHIP $1,365,467 Funds raised 1,190 Members 7 The time I spent in the Harry Ransom Center was absolutely pivotal to how 5 I saw T. H. White, and so the whole book. I couldn’t have written it without access to the collections. — Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk Fostering Research and Learning 2015–2016 was a vibrant year for research and learning at the Harry Ransom Center. The Center enhanced its emphasis on teaching with the collections, providing University of Texas undergraduate and graduate students more opportunities than ever before to engage with unique cultural materials. This year saw a 15% increase in the number of students who studied collection items in classes at the Center. The Reading and Viewing Room was filled with researchers and fellows throughout the year, particularly during January when Austin hosted the Modern Language Association convention, and the Center opened its doors to conference attendees. Research interest in the Center’s collections continues to grow, and staff answered a record number of reference queries this year. To extend the reach of the collections to those unable to travel to Austin, the Center remains dedicated to building its digital collections. The Ransom Center received a highly competitive grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize more than 24,000 items from the Gabriel García Márquez archive, a project that is currently underway. RESEARCH The Ransom Center serves researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, as well as visiting students, fellows, and scholars from across the country and around the world. Representing 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and 24 countries, researchers submitted nearly 18,000 requests this year to study books, manuscripts, works of art, and photographs from the collections. While Austin’s hosting of cultural and music festivals such as South by Southwest and Austin City Limits always brings new visitors to our research spaces, this year Austin also hosted the world’s largest scholarly meeting in the humanities. In January 2016, the Modern Language Association convention brought more activity to our Reading and Viewing Room than we have ever seen between semesters. Of great interest throughout this year was the archive of Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez, which opened for research in the fall of 2015 and is already one of the Center’s five most frequently studied collections. Researchers’ Geographic Origins: AUSTRALIA ITALY CIRCULATION OF COLLECTIONS AUSTRIA JAPAN BELGIUM MALTA Non-UT Faculty and Independent Scholars 55% CANADA MEXICO CHINA PORTUGAL Non-UT Graduate, Undergraduate, and High School Students 20% COLOMBIA RUSSIA UT Faculty and Staff 12% EGYPT SINGAPORE FRANCE SOUTH AFRICA UT Graduate Students 7% GERMANY SPAIN HONG KONG SWEDEN UT Undergraduate Students 6% INDIA UNITED KINGDOM IRELAND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ISRAEL MOST FREQUENTLY CIRCULATED COLLECTIONS David Foster Wallace (1,160 requests) Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (699 requests) ONSITE RESEARCHER USE OF COLLECTIONS REFERENCE QUERIES Gabriel García Márquez (619 requests) 16,225 J. M. Coetzee 6,025 (428 requests) 5,990 5,676 5,202 12,083 4,834 David O. Selznick 11,665 10,232 (422 requests) 9,656 9,354 7,719 7,866 7,530 6,957 2,397 5,993 2,107 1,937 2,052 4,553 3,799 1,745 1,796 1,620 2011–2012 2012–2013 2013–2014 2014–2015 2015–2016 2011–2012 2012–2013 2013–2014 2014–2015 2015–2016 Researcher Visits * Unique Researchers Onsite Offsite Total * Denotes the cumulative number of days all researchers spent in the Reading and Viewing Room 8 When I arrived at the Center… I had almost completed a first draft of a forthcoming biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson… But there were gaps in my research... My two-month fellowship at the Center has not only filled in those gaps; it has enormously enriched the scope of my biography. — Deirdre David, Professor Emerita of English, Temple University, and recipient of a 2015–2016 fellowship jointly supported by the British Studies Fellowship and the C. P. Snow Memorial Fund FELLOWSHIPS During 2015–2016, the Ransom Center awarded $158,500 in fellowship grants, supporting research visits for 70 scholars. The fellowship recipients, more than half of whom were based outside the U.S., consulted materials across the Center’s collections for such projects as “Global Hollywood and the New Iranian Cinema,” “Photography and the Nineteenth-Century Illustrated Book,” “Spanish Comedias Sueltas of Agustín Moreto,” and “Fashioning the French Camus.” An ongoing partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) supported six additional AHRC-funded fellows from the U.K. FELLOWSHIPS AWARDED POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS: 50 DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS: 20 TOTAL: 70 It was thrilling to be able to spend time poring over these vast raw materials, 9 slowly stitching together a compositional history. — David Hering, University of Liverpool, recipient of a 2013–2014 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship RESEARCHER PUBLICATIONS Research within the Ransom Center’s collections inspires an abundance of new publications and scholarly works. During 2015–2016, scholars and writers published 145 books, 40 articles, and 7 dissertations or theses based on their research at the Center. These publications advance scholarship while sharing the Center’s collections with broad audiences. Highlights of these publications include: Milton on Film, by Eric C. Brown* (Duquesne University Press, 2015) The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 4, 1966–1989, edited by George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn, and Lois More Overbeck* (Cambridge University Press, 2016) ‘The World’ and Other Unpublished Works of Radclyffe Hall, edited by Jana Funke* (Manchester University Press, 2016) David Foster Wallace: Fiction and Form, by David Hering* (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years, by Gerri Kimber* (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) Tom Lea, Life Magazine, and World War II, edited by Adair Margo and Melissa Renn* (El Paso: Tom Lea Institute, 2016) Hitchcock’s Appetites: The Corpulent Plots of Desire and Dread, by Casey McKittrick* (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) Habitual Offenders: A True Tale of Nuns, Prostitutes, and Murderers in Seventeenth-Century Italy, by Craig A. Monson* (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Sounding the Color Line: Music and Race in the Southern Imagination, by Erich Nunn* (University of Georgia Press, 2015) Law and Sexuality in Tennessee Williams’s America, by Jacqueline O’Connor* (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016) The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder: Volume 1: Prose, edited by Jason Powell* (Oxford University Press, 2016) Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance, by Todd W. Reeser* (University of Chicago Press, 2015) The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee, by Jan Wilm* (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) * Ransom Center fellowship recipient 10 I love going to the Ransom Center for class.