Columbia University Libraries (CUL) remain closed until further notice to aid in the containment of COVID-19. While unable to physically process materials, RBML’s archivists are working on offsite locations to update finding aids and create greater accessibility for our collections. Here, Head Archivist Kevin Schlottmann shares these updates. Please be safe, wear your mask and […]
Category: Oral History
Workshops | OHMA Series on Anti-Oppression and Oral History
In this current moment of performative corporate, nonprofit and individual Black Lives Matters statements, what does it actually mean for Black, Indigenous and People of Color lives to actually matter? Beyond slogans, our oral history colleagues in the Oral History Master’s Program are going deep with a new summer series on Anti-Oppression and Oral History. […]
Anti-Racist and Black Liberation Archives in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library
The extrajudicial murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which followed the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and coincided with a global pandemic that has taken disproportionate toll on African Americans, reveals that systemic racism is a life or death matter–for the millions of people who suffer its effects, and for a nation that purports […]
Oral history resources for teachers…and parents now teaching at home
A round-up of resources made available to the public by educators using oral histories from the Oral History Archives at Columbia Collections. Voices of Virginia: An Auditory Primary Source Reader Curators Jessica Taylor, PhD with Emily Stewart “Voices of Virginia pulls together stories from oral history collections from across decades and archives to create an […]
A 1966 oral history offers insights into roots of unemployment insurance
When Paul Brandeis Raushenbush contacted the Oral History Archives to access an oral history interview with his grandparents, Elizabeth Brandeis and Paul Raushenbush, he was already researching their role in what would become a national unemployment insurance policy, part of the Social Security Act of 1935. He couldn’t have foreseen the pandemic and that 17 […]