Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yiddish typewriter.

While the University of Texas may have moved a lot of books out of its library a couple years ago, it's also building a massive archive, including the papers of still-living writers.

The New Yorker visits

Regarding contemporary acquisitions:

With the assistance of this group of young people, Staley has created what he calls the “post-fifties list”—a group of six hundred or so current writers whom the center monitors. The roster is divided into three parts: “We have the writers whose archives we’re trying to get—the A level,” Staley says. “Then there’s the B level—these would be writers where we would get their published material, first editions and so on. And then there’s the C level, where we would try to get first editions of their major work.” The C’s include Martin Amis, Jonathan Franzen, and Dave Eggers. Some B’s: David Foster Wallace, J. D. Salinger, and J. M. Coetzee. Staley was reluctant to divulge the A’s, but he said that Ian McEwan was among them.

Here's a bonus online New Yorker slideshow