Dr. Robert Hamblin still can't claim William Faulkner's pocket watch for the Faulkner Collection.

But he'll soon be able to claim a permanent home for the Center for Faulkner Studies, which means the collection of manuscripts, books, photos and other items -- and hopefully one day, the pocket watch -- will be more accessible to scholars from around the world.

"Up to this point, we've largely been a mail-order business," said Hamblin, a professor of English and Faulkner scholar at Southeast Missouri State University.

Scholars write in with requests for copies of manuscripts, photos and even dust jackets, and the staff make copies of the material and send them out, he said.

By the start of the spring semester, the center is scheduled to be operating out of a suite of offices at Kent Library, where the Faulkner Collection is housed.

"It has not been fully operational because we never had a work center in the library," Hamblin said.

When several social sciences classes were forced to meet in the library, no space was available for the center. Now those classes are moving to other buildings, and the center will be ready to go once staff and supplies are set up.

With an office and a part-time staff, he said, the center will be able to sponsor more programs and provide more information for scholars and writers.

In 1997, Southeast will host a celebration of the centennial of Faulkner's birth. Hamblin, a Mississippi native himself, will be the keynote speaker at the Faulkner Centennial celebration in New Albany, Miss., Faulkner's birthplace.

"I grew up about 30 miles from where Faulkner was born, though I never saw him," Hamblin said.

Faulkner, considered the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, received the 1949 Nobel Prize for literature and won Pulitzer Prizes for the novels "A Fable" and "The Reivers."

Faulkner captured Southern history and tradition in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County. He explored violent themes and mind-bending sentence structures to force his complex characters to arrive at difficult truths.

His talent didn't make him rich, though, Hamblin said. "Faulkner is not a writer for the mass public. He's elitist. He's hard to read. But people get hooked on him."

Louis Daniel Brodsky, a poet and co-editor with Hamblin of several books about Faulkner, amassed the collection of books, photos, manuscripts and memorabilia.

The university acquired Brodsky's Faulkner Collection in 1989. Since then, scholars have been visiting the campus to use the collection.

"We get a lot of requests for photographs," Hamblin said. "We probably have one of the best collections of photographs of Faulkner in the world."

The original dust jackets are also hot tickets for some Faulkner lovers, he said, because they disappear so quickly.

A major project will be cataloging and indexing the thousands of items in the collection, Hamblin said.

Beth Pate, a senior majoring in historic preservation, has proposed creating a subject index for materials relating to Joseph Blotner, a Faulkner biographer. She's still waiting for approval on the project.

"There's a lot of work to be done, and we hope that not only English students but the historic preservation from time to time will be involved," Hamblin said.

Southeast has one of four Faulkner Collections in the United States. The others are in Virginia, Texas and, of course, Mississippi.

"In some ways, ours is number one. We have the best book collection," Hamblin said.

The Faulkner Collection at Southeast features more than 200 books inscribed by Faulkner, including several first editions, handmade volumes and books presented as gifts to the novelist.

The collection also boasts several of Faulkner's early poetry manuscripts and the movie scripts he worked on at Warner Brothers studio in the 1940s.

"Any of the manuscripts we have, if we have it, nobody else has it," Hamblin said.

And manuscripts -- scribbled over, crumpled and coffee-stained -- are what serious scholars crave, he said, because they show the different stages of development the writer's work goes through as it takes shape.

Joel Williamson, a Pulitzer-nominated historian and author of "Out of the Garden: William Faulkner and Southern Culture," came here for two consecutive summers and used the manuscripts for several weeks at a time, Hamblin said.

Williamson's current project is on another historic Southern personage: Elvis Presley. "We can't help him with that," Hamblin said.

FAULKNER COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS

What makes the Faulkner Collection such a jewel? Faulkner himself, says Dr. Robert Hamblin, professor of English and Faulkner scholar at Southeast. His standing as the greatest American novelist of the 20th century and literary pioneer, the nooks and crannies of his eccentricities all add to the value of the collection.

*The Dropped I: On page 11 of the first edition, first printing of Faulkner's novel "As I Lay Dying," the index I that introduces the first paragraph is too low. The misprint was corrected later in the press run. "It's like a stamp printed upside down or a misspelled word in a document," Hamblin said.

*More than 200 books signed by Faulkner, including novels he signed and gave to friends and books from his own library. "What makes Faulkner so collectible is he didn't sign a lot of books," Hamblin said, possibly only 500 in his entire life. Writing was not a profitable venture for Faulkner, who had one bestseller -- "Sanctuary" in 1931 -- to his name. "He once said, `If I sign books for strangers, what will I have to give to my friends?' He didn't have any money," Hamblin said.

*The Marble Faun, possibly the volume Faulkner-philes covet the most. The collection boasts two copies of the anthology of Faulkner's verse, one inscribed by Faulkner and his mentor Phil Stone to an old schoolmate of Faulkner's, and the other inscribed to Joe Parks, an Oxford banker who was probably the model for Flem Snopes. Frankly, Hamblin said, the poems aren't that great. "It took Faulkner a while to discover that he should be a novelist," Hamblin said. About 500 of the volumes were printed, and not too many sold.

*"Go Down Moses," a signed copy of a limited edition of 100 copies. The volume in the collection is the 28th in the series.

*"The Wishing Tree," which Faulkner made by hand as a gift for the young daughter of his lady love -- and later, wife -- Estelle Franklin. Faulkner made as many as four or five books of the children's story, including one for a young neighbor dying of cancer and one for actress Ruth Ford's daughter.

*Movie scripts, including Faulkner's versions of "The De Gaulle Story," which was never produced as a film, a draft of "Battle Cry," also never produced, "To Have and Have Not," "The Damned Don't Cry" and "Country Lawyer." Not many of the scripts Faulkner worked on actually made it to the screen, Hamblin said. Most stuck too closely to the novels on which they were based, and so couldn't pass Hollywood's Hayes Code.

*A handwritten manuscript of the short story "Wash," which was later incorporated into the novel, "Absolom, Absolom!"