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Explore stories inspired by the collections of writers and artists held at the Ransom Center, one of the leading humanities research libraries in the world.
Conservation

It is one thing for the Ransom Center to collect the papers of Nobel Laureates and another thing entirely to collect the papers of future Nobel Laureates.
Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss on the archive of KAZUO ISHIGURO
In the galleries
One of the most celebrated objects in the history of photography, The Niépce Heliograph, is featured in a permanent exhibition just inside the main entrance to the Harry Ransom Center. The untitled photograph—the earliest known surviving photograph made with the aid of the camera obscura—was produced in 1827 by the French scientist and inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a process he called héliographie. Permanent exhibitions are never really “permanent,” however; objects may remain in place, but their meanings are always evolving, and exhibitions are periodically revised to reflect those advances.