Event | ArteSana: Celebrating the Life and Work of Josefina Báez

Join us for a conversation and celebration of the Josefina Báez Papers, now part of the Latino Arts and Activisms Collection in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The discussion will be held on Thursday, October 5, 2023, at Maison Française (515 W. 116th St, New York, NY 10027) from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. […]

Read More…

Exploring Black History in Archival Collections

In celebration of Black History Month, we invite you to explore a few newly-available collections and recent acquisitions in our Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) that showcase the deep contributions of Black historians, thought leaders, and important figures in our archives. The RBML holds the papers of writer Amiria Baraka and an audio-visual collection […]

Read More…

Meet Kevin, who ensures that archives in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library are discoverable and accessible to researchers

Q: Which part of the Libraries do you work in, and what’s your role? The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is Columbia University’s principal repository for special collections. The holdings include hundreds of thousands of rare books and nearly 80,000 linear feet of archival material, which are records created by people or institutions as […]

Read More…

Lehman Center Spring Program: “Race, Inequality, and Health”

Tomorrow, February 4th, the Lehman Center for American History begins its spring programming with “Chronic Complication: Diabetes, Amputations, and Race in America,” a lecture by Dr. Richard M. Mizelle, Jr., which is part of a continuing lecture series on the nexus of “Race, Inequality, and Health.” A collaboration between the Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Department of […]

Read More…

Announcing Curatorial Shorts from the Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Curatorial Shorts, a series of talks presented by the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) on Mondays at 4 p.m., offer an informal look at new research and findings from the library’s collections.  The first Curatorial Short will showcase the RBML holdings of Harry Stephen Keeler, a scholar of literary plots, a theorist of generic […]

Read More…

Rare Book & Manuscript Library Acquires the Archive of Playwright Myrna Casas

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Myrna Casas papers in the Latino Art and Activism Archives. The new collection contains a range of rich materials pertaining to the life and work of playwright Myrna Casas (1934-present), one of the most important Puerto Rican, Caribbean, […]

Read More…

Columbia University Libraries’ New and Noteworthy Acquisitions

From seventeenth-century Japan to twentieth-century New York, the Libraries’ latest acquisitions span place and time, bridging countries and cultures and furthering the Libraries’ mission to support a global community of scholars. Here is a selection of new and noteworthy holdings from the Libraries’ special collections and archives and digital resources in women, gender, and sexuality […]

Read More…

Meet Yingwen Huang, Processing Archivist

“I’m Yingwen Huang and I arrange and describe archival collections in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, specifically historical manuscripts and documents in the Chinese language. My interests include East Asian languages, history, and culture. My favorite part of my job is making our collections more accessible to everyone and assisting researchers from all over the world in learning […]

Read More…

Columbia Libraries Launches Website for the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ)

Columbia Libraries is very pleased to announce the launch of the website for the digitized data of the Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry. An accompanying guide to the use of the digitized materials with many supplementary materials is also available. The LCAAJ archive is an extraordinary resource for research in Yiddish studies that […]

Read More…