Events
Friends Celebrate 4 Millionth Volume at Annual Meeting
The Friends of the Sterling C. Evans Library celebrated Texas A&M University’s 4 Millionth Volume during the annual meeting at the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives on March 28, 2009. The 4 Millionth Volume, an extremely rare edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha, Parts I and II, was acquired through a gift by Sara and John H. Lindsey ’44 of Houston. The Lindseys are charter members of the Friends and contributors to all the millionth volumes.
Guest speaker, Dr. Eduardo Urbina, professor of Hispanic Studies and Director of the Cervantes Project, described his quest for the 4 Millionth Volume and other rare editions of the Quixote which comprise this collection. Housed at Cushing Library , the Cervantes Collection consists of 1065 titles and 2500 volumes in 25 languages including Arabic, Chinese, Hungarian and Yiddish. Urbina called it 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.
Colleen Cook, dean of the University Libraries, expressed appreciation to Friends president Larry Mitchell for donating his own collection to Cushing Library. Built over 30 years, the collection consists of boxing, dictionaries and modern British literature. The Friends elected officers and new Board members for 2009-10.
