[3] Leopold von Ranke (21 December 1795 – 23 May 1886) was a German historian and a founder of modern source-based history.

[4][5] According to Caroline Hoefferle, "Ranke was probably the most important historian to shape [the] historical profession as it emerged in Europe and the United States in the late 19th century.

"[6] He was able to implement the seminar teaching method in his classroom and focused on archival research and analysis of historical documents.

It includes a first edition of Martin Luther's Table Talk, The Libellus of Telesphorus of Cosenza, a first edition copy of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (in French), Institutes of the Christian Religion, several volumes of Mercurius Gallobelgicus, a pamphlet written by Thomas Müntzer,[3] Ludovico Antonio Muratori's Rerum Italicarum scriptores [it], Giovanni Domenico Mansi's Sacrorum conciliorum, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, and extensive personal memoirs of Ranke.

[11] In 1875, a wealthy cleric, John Morrison Reid, was convinced by Syracuse University librarian Charles W. Bennett of the necessity to purchase more books for the library.

There is no doubt that this library, which numbers many thousands of books, pamphlets, manuscripts and documents of all times and all languages, is the finest historical collection in the world....

But this great and invaluable collection, which should have gone to one of the large cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Chicago, or to one of the university towns like Cambridge, New Haven, Ithaca or Ann Arbor, is going to Syracuse, which is neither a large city nor a university town, but a place principally devoted to the manufacture of salt and the supply of provisions to through railroad travellers.

Leopold von Ranke's family requested that the collection was to remain in one place and they receive a fair price for it.

In 1977, the National Endowment for the Humanities granted the library $50,000 and matched an additional $50,000 raised from private sources for restoration of the collection.