PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – After nearly three years of infighting and courtroom skirmishes, the Providence Athenaeum will auction off its most valuable holding, John James Audubon’s celebrated “The Birds of America,” today.

The collection of 435 color engravings of birds in the wild, based on Audubon’s drawings, is estimated to fetch between $5 million and $7 million, according to Christie’s, the New York auction house conducting the sale. Christie’s calls it the finest color plate book of ornithology ever produced.

“It’s really one of those prizes in the art world,” said Bendetta Roux, a Christie’s spokeswoman.

The work, produced on etched, hand-colored plates, is valuable because it’s a complete collection, is in excellent condition and because the library was an original subscriber to the work, which was completed in 1838. There are fewer than 120 known complete copies of Audubon’s masterwork, according to Christie’s.

Another complete copy of “Birds of America,” the Fox-Bute set, was sold by Christie’s for $8.8 million in March 2000, a record for a printed book sold at auction.

The Athenaeum, the fourth oldest library in the United States, was less than a year old when its board voted on the purchase, and only was able to finance the buy when a dozen individual members pledged their own money.

At the time, the prints weren’t terribly popular with the public; the library’s original intent to use them for fundraising never really materialized.

“It just wasn’t profitable,” said Betty Rawls Lang, president of the private library’s board of directors.

Plagued by a lack of space, the Athenaeum has displayed only some of the prints at a time, while the rest have remained filed away. Visitors were few, confined mostly to art groups.

The library is selling the prints to raise money for its endowment, which the institution has tapped in recent years to pay for building repairs and to cover higher expenses.

Its endowment fell from more than $6 million in the mid-1990s to about $3.9 million by July 2002, according to court documents. Meanwhile, its annual operating budget doubled to $900,000 from 1998 to 2002, forcing the board to draw from its endowment, the court papers show.

The library’s board decided in February 2003 to sell the collection, igniting an uproar. A group of members and shareholders took the library to court to stop the auction, accusing board members of taking office illegally and mismanaging and depleting the library’s finances.

A Superior Court judge ruled in the library’s favor, and the state Supreme Court upheld that decision in July.

Rawls Lang said many maintenance projects at the library have been deferred. The library has a leaking roof in one room, skylights that need to be replaced, a heating system that needs updating, and work to meet revised fire codes. This week, a door fell off when a cable channel was filming for a story about the auction, according to employee Christina Bevilacqua.

It’s tough raising money for a literary institution these days, Rawls Lang said.

“When you say, Would you give to a library?’ they say, Well, you know, I will give to the latest tragedy or to cancer.’ It’s a difficult sell in a way,” she said.

Some other nonprofit institutions have recently struggled with similar problems, and faced selling valuable art to replenish their finances.

Last month, the New York Public Library auctioned a portrait of George Washington for $8.1 million, and also sold other art objects to raise money for its endowment. Early this year, the Rhode Island Historical Society said it would have to sell an important Colonial-era desk and bookcase to help offset financial problems caused at least in part by its evaporating endowment.

The sale was put off when someone gave $750,000 to the society, but it’s unclear whether the group will be forced to sell the desk.

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On the Net:

Providence Athenaeum: http://www.providenceathenaeum.org

Christie’s: http://www.christies.com