Scholars know the Ransom Center as one of the world's pre-eminent research libraries, but until now the public has caught only fleeting glimpses into its rich chambers.

For years the Ransom Center has been housed in an ugly, forbidding hulk of a building on the university campus.

Curators at the Ransom Center say they observe rigorous standards of quality when considering which contemporary writers to collect.

The Ransom Center - the "deep-pocketed collectors" to which Franzen referred - is beginning to acquire e-mail correspondence along with writers' papers.

Mailer's $2.5 million deal with the Ransom Center, for instance, stipulated that the author donate a certain amount back toward cataloging and conservation.

The Ransom Center has a vast collection of literary and cultural treasures, and it paid handsomely for many of them.

Unlike most other universities, the Ransom Center takes an aggressive approach to preserving its hair.

For now the Ransom Center is an extreme, but there are signs that ephemera is gaining more respect within the academy.

"Our goals are clear," said Thomas F. Staley, director of the Ransom Center.

There are 45 boxes of Lessing's materials at the Ransom Center that contain nearly all of her available manuscripts and typescripts up to 1999.