Room 337 of Founders Memorial Library will be the bustling apex of transcendental culture no more.

For the last six years, NIU has been the world’s leading researcher on Henry David Thoreau.

The research project, known as the Thoreau Edition or “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau,” is a collective effort to study and transcribe the absolute entirety of one of America’s most original writers.

Thoreau’s best known novel, “Walden,” helped usher in the American transcendental literary movement.

“Thoreau only published two books and some essays, short stories and poetry,” said Mary Shelden, NIU Thoreau Edition staff member. “But he left a great deal of work unpublished.”

He amassed 47 handwritten volumes of thoughts and ideas, 300 letters, 72 essays, 200 natural surveys, thousands of pages of natural observations, 21 books of cultural anthropology and much more.

The Thoreau Edition, headed by Elizabeth Witherell for the last 24 years, attempts to make heads and tails of Thoreau’s incredible work.

The Thoreau Edition has been moved, during its 40 years, from universities in California to Princeton to New York and inevitably to NIU.

“In 2005, Witherell’s husband received and accepted an offer for Vice-President of Research back at University of California, Santa Barbara, meaning a move for the couple back to California,” Young said. “There was a search committee appointed to recruit a replacement editor in chief, but unfortunately, there is only a small pool of folks available and competent enough to head the complex editing.”

There were five individuals interviewed and considered by the committee over two sessions but none fit due either to the location, time or skill demanded by the project.

On July 1, the Thoreau Edition moved back, with Witherell as editor in chief, to the University of California, Santa Barbara.