At the University Archives, working with researchers allows us to learn about a wide range of Columbians.

From a researcher, we learned about Otelia Cromwell, the first African American woman to receive a PhD at Yale. (Cromwell received a Master’s degree from Columbia in 1911.)

Another asked us about Anni Weiss-Frankl, one of the early researchers working on what is now known as autism. (Born Anni Babette Weiss, she was a student and an Associate of Child Guidance at Columbia University’s Teachers College in the late 1930s.)

But there are certain Columbians whom researchers frequently ask about.

In response to a recent flurry of requests about certain individuals associated with Columbia we’ve added a new section to our research guide: Notable Columbians. This guide provides information on what and how you can find materials related to these three amazing individuals: Bhimrao Ambedkar, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and V.K. Wellington Koo. We provide links to digitized resources (including PDFs of documents scanned for previous users) wherever possible and direct users to relevant analog collections across our holdings and those of the RBML.

The staff of the University Archives is always looking for new ways to engage with and empower our researchers. Through our use of Research Guides we are able to share our knowledge about popular research topics with our users and direct them to appropriate online and in-person resources.

We consider our research guides a work in progress so if there are other individuals you’d like to see included or other topics you would like us to create a research guide for, please let us know by emailing uarchives@columbia.edu.

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