It looked like this for five months after the contractor went broke:

No permission needed: it’s open to the public! But it’s a very small staff, and they appreciate advance notice.

The entire draft collection (11,000 pages for The Lord of the Rings!) is viewable as high-resolution scans, though the originals are in a vault. The scans may only be viewed at Marquette, by Tolkien Estate (not archive) rules.

Anyone is welcome to visit the archive during business hours, tho it’s appreciated if you contact them first. On public display are reproductions of several draft pages, and there are published reference works available to consult as well as the world’s largest collection of early fandom material.

Tolkien Gateway’s page on the librarian in question, William Ready, is pretty good. There is no question that Ready fabricated the bit about Tolkien offerring to sell, though. He approached Tolkien using a London bookseller named Bertram Rota as his agent.

tolkiengateway.net/wiki/William...

Apparently an old high school friend of mine was granted access and she said that the person who started it did so because he saw the surge in Tolkien popularity coming. Prescient fellow.

At this rate, you’ll exceed your previous quarterly results, and merit a waffle party!

Found & followed!

Thank you, @jtauber.com James! Not sure why it took me so long to figure out where everyone had gone! 🤣