Archival description is a critical part of any special collection program. Researchers rely on description of our archival collections to find materials relevant to their work. Archivists rely on description to manage the materials. As office technology changes, archival description changes along with it. […]
News from the RBML’s Archivists and Collections Management Specialists | December 2020
Kevin Schlottmann, RBML’s Head Archivist, shares these updates about finding aids that our archivist and collections management specialists have stewarded over the past month and made available for RBML researchers – a season of bounty even in a global pandemics! Newly digitized oral history collections Gail Mary Killian and Stephen Desroches sound recordings, 1970-2003 “The […]
2020: A Year Unlike Any Other
As we come to the end of what has been a topsy-turvy year, we wanted to take a moment to look back on how the University Archives (UA) responded to the various challenges that came our way and what we’ve managed to accomplish since the library closed and New York went on pause in March. […]
Some Illumination for All
Columbia’s collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts is rich and resplendent, for all that much of it has sat quietly and largely unseen in the stacks throughout most of this tumultuous year. But while opportunities to leaf through these manuscripts in person may still feel distant, it just got much easier to see a few […]
“’Twas the Night Before Christmas” and Columbia
Did you know that in 1822 Clement Clark Moore, Columbia College Class of 1798 and a most loyal Columbian, created the iconic Santa Claus with a beard “as white as the snow,” “a little round belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly” and a bundle of toys “flung on his […]