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THE HEIKO A. OBERMAN RESEARCH LIBRARY
A Collection of Medieval and Reformation Sources

"Where my library is, there is my Fatherland."
—Erasmus (†1536)

   In October 2000, Heiko A. Oberman and his family announced their intention to give to The University of Arizona's Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies the extraordinary reference and research library that Oberman had assiduously collected during his lifetime. The transfer will occur upon the University's success in endowing a faculty chair to bring another renowned scholar to the Division. The University regards a capital sum of $2 million as the minimum that will generate sufficient income to sustain a chair.
   The Oberman library , characterized as the largest such collection remaining in private hands in North America and appraised in 1998 at $1.2 million, would constitute a world-class acquisition by the University Library. It comprises over ten thousand volumes centered on the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation, many of which would be virtually impossible to find in today's market. A collection of this importance will draw scholars from other parts of the nation by its riches in late medieval and early modern history. The acquisition of the Oberman Library would dramatically increase the sources available within the State of Arizona for the study of a formative era of the European past.
   One of the most outstanding segments of this collection travels under the technical label of "Rariora," meaning, essentially, items of exceptional rarity. Among these are a number of printed books from the early sixteenth century as well as later examples. In the main these are works of medieval and Reformation scholars. This section alone will provide a resource to students and community members that they can otherwise encounter only with difficulty.
   This will make The University of Arizona Library a center of excellence in the field of early modern European thought. Via the sixteenth-century Protestant and Catholic Reformation movements and their spread into the New World, prominent strains in this thought influenced the establishment of cultural and social institutions in this region as well as on the larger North American continent. During the early modern period, Europe acquired world-wide hegemony for the first time through its colonial system, which incorporated the present American Southwest. The incorporation of this research collection into The University of Arizona Library will dramatically increase the available documentation of this watershed period.

• UA may land nation's largest private library, Arizona Daily Wildcat, October 14, 2002

• Prestigious gift of books, Tucson Citizen, October 12, 2002

• Scholar's library may go to UA , Arizona Daily Star, October 3, 2002