It contains comic books and medieval codices, Eugene Ormandy’s old musical scores and 500 boxes’ worth of Theodore Dreiser’s literary output. And in February Penn’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library received an anonymous $4.25 million gift to support the first phase of a physical overhaul aimed at making its collections more accessible to scholars and students. The renovation of the sixth-floor space in Van Pelt-Dietrich will add classrooms, a media lab, and a new home for the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image [“Open Treasure,” March|April 2009]. The expansion project, estimated to cost $15 million overall, is one of the library’s key goals within the University’s Making History capital campaign.
