A new endowment has been established in memory of anthropologist and ethnohistorian Henry “”Hank”” Dobyns’ anthropological collection of books and materials.

The endowment was created by Rich Stoffle, an associate professor of applied research in anthropology at the UA, and Carla Stoffle, dean of libraries at the UA. The endowment consists of an initial gift of $10,000. Dobyns died on June 21.

Dobyns earned his undergraduate degree and worked as a senior researcher at the Bureau of Applied Anthropology at the UA.

He used the UA library as a main resource for his work with Native American tribes in the area. Dobyns lived in Tucson part of the year and worked with special collections and the Arizona Historical Society. 

Dobyns and Stoffle met at the University of Kentucky when Stoffle was a student and Dobyns was a professor.

“”We shared common interests,”” Stoffle said. The two worked and published together during and after Stoffle’s college career.

“”His whole life was books. He never had a TV or radio, he simply read,”” said Rich Stoffle. “”If you were to go into his house you would think you had gone into a library.””

The library estimates the entire collection to include 10,000 books and 400 boxes of materials. A large portion of that is original research.

“”It will be a treasure trove for our students,”” said Carla Stoffle.

This endowment will go to the digitalization of Dobyns’ collection and of future anthropological collections. It was also go toward processing and purchasing new anthropological collections.

Digitalization is something the library has already begun to work toward, which, when achived, means collections would be available online and students could call up library materials from home.

The processing of the Dobyns’ collection is underway. The library has begun to process around 600 books from Dobyns’ home in Tucson and hopes to have them available within the next few months.

It will take longer to organize his papers, which are located at his summer home in Edmond, Okla. Collection organizers hope to retrieve the rest of his collection from Oklahoma in February.