infrastructure over the next 20 years. Libraries Syracuse University's main library is the Ernest S. Bird Library, which opened in 1972. Its seven levels contain 2.3 million books, 11,500 periodicals, of manuscripts and rare books, 3.6 million microforms, and a café. It remains one of the hundred largest libraries in the country. There are also several departmental libraries on campus. Many of the landmarks in the history of recorded communication between people are in the university's Special Collections Research Center, from cuneiform tablets and papyri to several codices dating from the 11th century to the invention of printing. The collection also includes works by Galileo, Luther, John Calvin, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Descartes, Francis Bacon, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Hobbes, Goethe, and others. Other collections of note include Rudyard Kipling first editions and an original second leaf of the Gutenberg Bible. In addition, the collection includes the personal library of Leopold Von Ranke. Making sensational headlines in 1887, the university outbid the Prussian government for all 19 tons of Von Ranke's prized personal library. Bird Library is also home to the largest collection of national archives of Kenya and Tanzania. Syracuse University is the first library to permanently preserve print collections of historical government publications produced by the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). In July 2008, Syracuse University became the owner of the second largest collection of 78 rpm records in the United States after the Library of Congress after a donation of more than 200,000 records. The donation, valued at $1 million, more than doubled the university's collection of 78 rpm records to about 400,000. It also has a special Harriet Tubman Research Collection and an Environmental Justice and Gender collection housed in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The MLK library holds over 15,000 acquisitions in African, African-American, Afro-Latino, and Caribbean studies. The university is also home to the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, whose holdings total approximately 540,000 recordings in all formats, primarily cylinders, discs, and magnetic tapes. Some of the voices to be found include Thomas Edison, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, and Oscar Wilde. South campus Student apartments and residence halls After World War II, a large, undeveloped hill owned by the university was used to house returning veterans in military-style campus housing. During the 1970s, this housing was replaced by permanent two-level townhouses equipped with kitchen, bathroom, and private bedrooms for two or three undergraduate students