Last month the University of Texas acquired the archives of the late great Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a set of precious documents and manuscripts that includes original material from books such as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera," as well as more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence, including letters from such notables as Carlos Fuentes and Graham Greene.

The University has declined to say how much they spent acquiring this collection.

The institute, which has in the past disclosed the prices paid for similar archival purchases, fears that releasing the purchase price could perhaps drive the cost of future collections up in what they describe as an "increasingly competitive" world market of rare manuscripts buying.

Gary Susswein, a university spokesman quoted in an AP article, has articulated their stance, saying: "Sellers routinely look for a precedent-setting price so they can set increasingly higher prices that hurt the university, and hurt the taxpayers who help fund the university.”

Aside from the secrecy of the funds spent on the Nobel Prize winner’s papers, the purchase of the archives was met with a separate controversy.

Colombia, where Marquez is considered the nation’s greatest writer, and Mexico, where Marquez spent the bulk of his life, have both expressed their disappointment that the archives would go to the University of Texas at Austin.

As detailed in the BBC, the AP had asked the university to reveal the purchase price back in November and were refused, whereupon the AP filed a formal request under a Texas state public records law for the contract to be made public.

The University of Texas on Wednesday informed the AP that it would ask the Texas attorney general for permission to keep the details of its purchase closed.

The University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center is well-known for its literary archives, collecting writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, William Faulkner and James Joyce.