Literature Prof’s Gift Lifts Library Toward Campaign Goal

Donation of Specialized Collection Starts With Five-Volume Italian Reference Work

Jan. 25, 2013

Tim Redman

Dr. Tim Redman holds one of the five volumes of the Vocabolario Treccani, which he describes as the Oxford English Dictionary of the Italian language. The set is the first of a series of books that the literature professor will donate.

A longtime UT Dallas professor is donating a trove of scholarly books to the Eugene McDermott Library, starting with a five-volume reference work he describes as the “Italian equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary.”

Dr. Tim Redman presented the Vocabolario Treccani as the first in a series of gifts from his academic library, the majority of which he plans to give to McDermott Library over a period of several years. Dr. Redman continues to teach literature at UT Dallas.

“I am healthy, but I wanted the library to have the special books related to my discipline over the next 10 years,” he said. “I believe other professors should consider donating the special books in their fields to the library when they are finished with them.”

Since 1998, Redman has been a professor of literary studies at UT Dallas in the School of Arts and Humanities. He first came to UT Dallas in 1989 as an assistant professor of English.

Besides being a scholar of American and Italian literature, Redman is the founder of the renowned UT Dallas Chess Program. He has more than 40 years’ experience in chess as a player, coach, tournament director and president of the U.S. Chess Federation. His work, Chess and Education: Selected Essays from the Koltanowski Conference, is considered a rigorous research book in the field.  He is editing a second book, based on papers delivered at the Second Koltanowski Conference.

His specialty areas are American and British modernism, American literature, medieval and Renaissance Italian literature (Dante through Petrarch), ecopoetics, biography and autobiography. He is an expert on Ezra Pound and is currently working on a cultural biography of the American poet. His book Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism was published in 1991 by Cambridge University Press.

Redman intends to include a clear provision in his will for the donation to the library. He is selecting the books by placing a bookplate in the front of each that states the volume is intended to be given to McDermott Library.  Redman’s gift is part of the more than $350,000 raised  toward the library’s $500,000 fundraising goal for the University’s Realize the Vision: The Campaign for Tier One & Beyond. The five-year effort aims to raise $200 million by 2014.

Gifts in kind to the library in 2012 included 4,542 items, mostly books and journals. Donors interested in providing gifts of this type should contact Dr. Ellen Safley, the director of UT Dallas Libraries, safley@utdallas.edu or telephone 972-883-2960.

With this gift, Redman joins The Legacy Society,  which recognizes gifts to UT Dallas through estate planning.

Realize the Vision logo

 

Redman said: “When I arrived at UTD in 1989, it was clear that there were serious deficiencies in McDermott Library – not of the staff, who are spectacular, but of the collection. My late parents were both lifelong members of the Christopher Society, whose motto is, ‘Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.’  So I wanted to do something in that spirit to honor them.”

When asked how many books he will donate, Redman said, “There are 1,000 bookplates. I expect there will be 1,000 more.”

Redman estimates the final value of the gift will be about $40,000, depending on appraisals. The books will be transferred to the library as they become less immediately relevant to his research.

When asked if he would miss his books, Redman replied, “As a faculty member, I retain visiting privileges.”


Media Contact: Tom Koch, McDermott Library, UT Dallas, (972) 883-4951, tkoch@utdallas.edu
or the Office of Media Relations, 972-883-2155, newscenter@utdallas.edu
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