The Columbia Research Initiative on the Global History of Sexualities (CRIGHS) recently launched a website and research guide describing approximately 150 archival collections, databases, oral histories, and other sources available across the Columbia and Barnard libraries of interest to historians of sexuality.
Author Archives: Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Butler Banner is an exhibit led by Columbia University students and supported and sponsored by Columbia University Libraries. Based on an artifact in the Libraries’ collections and an historic campus event, the exhibit aims to foster conversations about representation in campus spaces, collections, and scholarship.
Throughout Butler you’ll find different aspects of the Banner to engage with, including here in the RBML, a segment of the original, 1989 Butler banner.
News from RBML’s Archivists | October 2019
Photo credit: Roman Craft
Head Archivist Kevin Schlottmann shares collections new from the RBML
Here are some new and updated finding aids, reflecting work by archivists in archival processing, collections management, and university archives, as well as by our graduate student internship program. – KWS
Marie Mattingly Meloney Collection on Marie Curie
“The bulk of the collection deals with Marie Curie’s travels in the United States in 1921 and 1929, as a result of Marie Mattingly Meloney’s fundraising campaigns to purchase radium for Curie’s experiments. It includes correspondence with, photographs of, and manuscripts and printed material by and about Marie Curie. There is also an academic cap worn by Marie Curie while accepting honorary degrees in the United States, and a watch given to Meloney by Curie.”
Marie Curie – Mobile Military Hospital X-Ray-Unit circa 1915
The American Assembly records, 1950-2007
“This collection contains the administrative papers from 1950 to 1970s, which document the establishment of the Assembly and how it operated in the framework of Columbia University and its Business School.” Continue reading
Acquisitions | A book made with glass pages and other new titles in book arts
Click the tweets below to enlarge and see which new acquisition Curator Michelle Chesner stop in her tracks.,,
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- Kristallnacht occurred in November, not September as noted above.
Becky Slemmons, They did not know that the books were already in our head, 2015.
Trending Collections | Summer 2019
These are the top ten RBML collection finding aids accessed from July 2019 through September 2019
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- Carnegie Corporation of New York records, circa 1872-2015 (see: Carnegie Corporation Digital Archives)
- Historical Photograph collection, 1858-
- Meyer Schapiro collection, 1919-2006
- Central Files, 1890-1984
- Bob Fass Recordings and Papers, 1960-2011 1963-1991
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace New York and Washington Offices records, 1910-
- Manuel Ramos Otero Papers, circa 1920s-2007 1967-1992
- Patti LuPone Collection, 1968-2019
- Edward Said Papers, 1940s-2006
- Bureau of Applied Social Research records, 1938-1977
New from RBML’s Archivists | September 2019
Newly Processed Collections
Cast in “A Musical Celebration of Broadway Honoring Patti LuPone”; The 27th Annual Black-Tie Benefit Gala for The Drama League at The Pierre Hotel, New York City; Photograph: © 2011 Richard Termine
Patti LuPone papers
A collection of scrapbooks, scripts, sheet music, and photographs chronicling the career of the Tony award winning actress and singer Patti LuPone.
#Loveinaction OH Collection
“The interviews of the #LoveInAction oral history collection were taken to document narrators’ experiences in the Student Interracial Ministry and SIM’s impact on their lives. The Student Interracial Ministry was founded in 1960 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Spurred by the civil rights movement, this student-run group strove to build greater understanding between people of diverse backgrounds by placing students in congregations to worship and live in different communities.”
Harriet Zuckerman papers
Correspondence, manuscripts, research files, drafts, memoranda, etc of the noted Columbia sociologist Harriet Zuckerman.
Manuel Ramos Otero
“Manuel Ramos Otero (1948-1990) is considered the first openly out homosexual writer from Puerto Rico. He resided in New York City for much of his adult life. In 1990, he returned to his hometown of Manatí, Puerto Rico, where he died of complications from HIV/AIDS. The collection includes personal and professional correspondence, manuscripts, notebooks and notes, reviews, photographs, and newspaper clippings. These materials range in date from Otero’s infancy to his death, 1948-1990. There is also a small section of the collection that contains material related to Otero posthumously, which dates from 1990 to 2007.”
Paul Levitz papers
Paul Levitz is a comic book writer, editor and executive. Currently the writer of Legion of Super-Heroes and Adventure Comics. He has served as a writer, editor, vice president, executive vice president, president and publisher at DC Comics. Over 40 years of comics scripts and Fanzines from the 1960s and 1970s.
Columbia University historical recordings, 1902-1985
A collection of phonograph records, reels of audio tape recordings, and motion picture films recording a variety of Columbia University academic and extra-curricular activities and events such as lectures; speeches, some at award ceremonies; commencement; installation of Nicholas M. Butler and Dwight D. Eisenhower as presidents of the University; King George VI of England during his visit, 1939; speech of England’s Queen Mother, Elizabeth in 1954; homecoming; football, the band; academic and alumni conferences; and radio programs under the auspices of Columbia.
Maison Française records, 1930s-2000s
Founded in 1913, the Maison Française of Columbia University was the first French cultural center established on an American campus. This collection consists of photographs, correspondence, event materials, fundraising records, calendars, publicity materials, programs, newsletters, interviews, and records related to a renovation project. It includes two scrapbooks containing mostly photographs of events at the Maison Française, such as the visits of Edith Piaf, Jean-Paul Satre, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer and Marcel Marceau.
Bard College Minutes, 1928-1944
This collection consists of the Board of Trustees and Faculty meeting minutes of St. Stephen’s College (1928-1935) and Bard College of Columbia University (1935-1944). In 1928, St. Stephen’s College, an undergraduate college of arts and sciences in Annandale-on-Hudson, was incorporated within the educational system of Columbia University as one of its colleges for undergraduates. In 1935, with former Columbia professor Donald Tewksbury as Dean, the College changed its name to Bard College of Columbia University, in honor of its founder, John Bard. In 1944, Bard opened its doors to women students and ended its association with Columbia.
Updated finding aids / collections
Virgil Thomson papers
There is now an online finding aid for the papers of music critic and composer Virgil Thomson.
Indusco Records
Oversize material in the Indusco Records is now fully described.
What is this place? A short intro to RBML
That is the question we hear a lot at the beginning of the new academic year as students explore Butler Library and end up here, in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, aka “The Pink Palace.”
Is there difference between a “castle” and a “palace?”
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is Columbia’s principal repository for primary source collections. The range of collections in the RBML spans more than 4,000 years and includes rare printed works, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, papyri, and Coptic ostraca; medieval and renaissance manuscripts; posters; art; comics & cartoons, and oral histories.
Forming the core of the collections: 500,000 printed books, 14 miles of manuscripts, personal papers, archives and records, and 10,000 (and counting) oral histories.
New from RBML’s Archivists | August 2019
Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
Head Archivist Kevin Schlottmann shares collections newly opened or updated by RBML’s Archivists.
New finding aids
Yehudah Joffe papers, 1893-1966, bulk 1920-1945
“The collection consists of Joffe’s correspondence, manuscripts/notes, and newspaper clippings. Joffe’s correspondence in Yiddish in English is both personal and professional, covering communication with institutions he was working at or hoping to work at. Joffe’s manuscripts contain drafts for lectures and notes on university seminars and lectures he attended under Prof. Roman Jakobson and others. Joffe’s newspaper clippings contain a selection of clippings relating to Prof. Peck, his undergraduate advisor, and miscellaneous clippings.
Agudath Israel Records, 1933-2008, bulk 1940-1947
” This collection consists of autograph signed letters, typed signed letters, postcards, telegrams, printed material, programs, newspaper clippings, and written public announcements pertaining to the Agudath Israel movement in America, Eretz Israel/Palestine, and Lithuania. Most materials are dated during the 1940s (wake of WWII). Most letters are addressed to Rabbi Aaron Ben Zion Shurin. The materials are mainly in Hebrew and English with some in Yiddish. Most materials concern the role of Orthodox Jewry in the wake of the Holocaust.”
Andrew Alpern Collection of Edward Gorey Materials
“A collection of original artwork, published books, printed ephemera, and branded merchandise by the writer and artist Edward Gorey (1925-2000), assembled by Andrew Alpern.”
Continue reading
United Bronx Parents – A Commitment to Service
By Rachel Klepper
(Part II of II. Read part I.)
Founded in the 1960s by Evelina López Antonetty (1922-1984) as a movement for school reform, United Bronx Parents developed into an important grassroots social-services provider.
Over time, the networks and power that Antonetty built transformed into an organization that provided public health services to Bronx residents and advocated for solutions to issues that residents faced, including substance abuse, hunger, homelessness, and HIV/AIDS. There are many reasons for these shifts, and UBP was certainly impacted by changes to neighborhood needs, local and national politics, and the nonprofit sector. The United Bronx Parents Inc. Records offer the opportunity to look to two internal factors that contributed to these changes: the staffing and management of UBP and its funding sources.
Executive director Lorraine Montenegro posed with a poster of her mother and UBP founder, Evelina López Antonetty
Lo and behold: a new finding aid for the Wellington Koo Papers
Processing collections and creating finding aids according to updated archival standards gives RBML archivists the opportunity to discover anew our collections. In this post, Processing Archivist Yingwen Huang reflects on creating a new finding aid for the heavily used Wellington Koo Papers. Wellington Koo, a graduate of Columbia and a prominent statesman and diplomat from China, played a major role in positioning China in the 20th Century international political scene. Koo used this papers as the basis for his extensive (10,000+ pages!) oral history interview held in RBML’s Oral History Archives.
“I hope this record will contribute in some small way to a mutual understanding between East and West, and to an understanding of history.” – Speech on the presentation of the Koo oral history to Columbia University, May 28, 1976
At the age of 31, Koo was the youngest delegate in the Chinese Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He was the key figure in speaking on the behalf of China in the direct restitution of Shandong province during the conference. He later went on to serve as the Chinese Ambassador to France, England, the United States, while representing China at the League of Nations and contributing to the founding of the United Nations.
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- Decoration by the Pope at the Vatican, 1939 March 12, Box 263 Folder 11.
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- Wellington Koo with Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace, June 1946, Box 264 Folder 11.
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- Wellington Koo with Edward Stettinus at Washington D.C. to attend the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, 1944 August 28, Box 264 Folder 4.