When is the “right” moment for collecting oral histories?

  In the rush to document history, students, faculty, and staff clamored for there to be oral histories capturing this moment in Columbia’s history. How will student protest and University reactions be archived, preserved, memorialized, and used/misused for varied agendas and purposes? In consulting with oral history collection donors, interviewing narrators, designing oral history projects […]

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First Commencement

The current exhibition of King’s College Diplomas in RBML’s Chang Octagon features reproductions of diplomas awarded by what we now know as Columbia from 1763 to 1773.  King’s College’s first President Samuel Johnson did not award diplomas at Commencement. His ceremonies included a more intimate ritual between the President, the graduate, and Johnson’s own Hebrew […]

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An A-to-Z of Oral History at Columbia: “F” is for “fair use”

  An A-to-Z of Oral History at Columbia is a monthly posting featuring the people, events, and organizations in the Oral History Archive at Columbia’s collections, as well as behind-the-scenes info about oral history methodology.             In this second post related to ethics (see the first post here, which in […]

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King’s College Diplomas and John B. Pine

At the RBML, we recently installed a small exhibition on diplomas awarded by King’s College, as Columbia was known from 1754 to 1784. The exhibition in the Chang Octagon includes reproductions of diplomas awarded from 1763 to 1773. How did these materials make it to the University Archives? For some, we are indebted to the […]

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Now on View: King’s College Diplomas

At the RBML, we recently installed a small exhibition on diplomas awarded by King’s College, as Columbia was known from 1754 to 1784. The exhibition in the Chang Octagon features reproductions of diplomas awarded from 1763 to 1773. It also includes related documents: a handwritten draft for an honorary degree, a program from the 1771 […]

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