Drawing upon its extensive holdings of 1968-related materials, the University Archives has created an exciting and informative exhibit about these turbulent times on Columbia's campus. Through the use of original documents, newspaper articles, dramatic images and audio from WKCR and the 1968 commencement ceremony (not heard since 1968!) 1968: Columbia in Crisis provides a broad overview of the causes, events and after-effects of these events from more than forty years ago. The University Archives invites you to learn about these events for the first time or to re-live them once more. This online exhibition is based upon a physical exhibition of the same name which was on display in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from March 17 to August 1, 2008.

The Albert Field Collection of Playing Cards contains more than 6300 individual decks of playing cards as well as extensive ephemera and a library of reference books. The decks, ranging from the 16th through the 20th centuries, and across the world, are a rich vein of primary source material in popular imagery, costume, advertising, propaganda, as well as elite culture. Holdings are especially strong from early modern England, revolutionary France, the early American Republic, across a broad range of nineteenth-century national styles, and especially in transformation cards. Cards digitized in 2018 represent most of the pre-1801 cards, as mounted by scholar-collector Albert Field (1916-2003; CC '38). Decks (in their entirety or just the most interesting parts) were mounted onto 16" x 20" sheets of black paper, generally four suits across; including, if useful, samples of the backs, and/or pip cards, any instructions included with the deck; and noting interesting aspects such as makers' marks and tax stamps with yellow dots. These decks include historical representations of various cultural and ethnic groups in racist, sexist, or other ways that may be offensive or harmful. We endeavored to identify these in the descriptions of individual decks, but we welcome feedback at rbml@columbia.edu.

The Amiri Baraka Papers contains correspondence, writings, and the personal, political activism and teaching materials related to Amiri Baraka’s career as a poet, writer, editor, activist, and teacher in the New York City Beat, Downtown, and Black Arts literary scenes from the 1960s through the 2000s.

Art Properties, based in Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, oversees Columbia University's art collection. Comprised of more than 13,000 works of art in all media, across multiple time periods and cultures worldwide, the collection is available for research and study, curricular use, and educational programs, and may be requested as external loans for special exhibitions. This curated digital project of over 500 works from the collection provides just a glimpse at the vast holdings in the University art collection. Highlights include: portrait paintings and modern art; daguerreotypes and other historic and modern examples of photography; drawings, watercolors, and prints by artists worldwide; historic Buddhist art from India, China, Tibet, and Japan, and numerous other examples of fine and decorative art from Asia; and archaeological artifacts from the Ancient Near East, the Aegean world, and ancient Rome and Etruria. This collection will grow over time as more high-resolution digital imaging takes place. To view thousands of records of information about artwork in Columbia’s permanent collection, consult CLIO, the Columbia University Libraries catalogue. To learn more about Art Properties and its services, go to the department’s webpage.

Avery Classics is home to one of the largest special collections of rare architectural materials in the world. In addition to books, manuscripts, and photographs, the department includes a significant collection of ephemera. This exhibit describes some of the brochures, pamphlets, advertising materials, postcards, and other forms of architectural ephemera within Avery Classics.

Avery Classics is one of the largest collections of rare architectural books in the world. Among its thousands of volumes are the first printed book on architecture--Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria of 1485--and over one hundred editions of Vitruvius, who wrote the lone surviving classical text on the subject. In addition to printed books, the collection also includes manuscripts, photographs, and broadsides that reflect the library's scope. However, certain items in Avery Classics have distinctive forms that fall outside all these categories. Such items, which we will call Architectural Novelties, are best explained in images. This exhibition highlights a selection of items from the Avery Classics collection that are both comprehensive and eccentric in their treatment of architecture.

The photographs in this exhibit were taken from 1944-1945 by Barney Rosset, then a young American Army photographer. Rosset documented the Chinese Army in their pursuit of Japanese troops following the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi. The Japanese Army was pulling back from the Ichi-Go operation, the largest Japanese land campaign of the war, and Rosset joined Chinese troops at the deepest point of Japanese penetration (Kweiyang).

The Robert Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by Robert Biggert in honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux. This unique collection of printed ephemera contains over 1,300 items with architectural imagery spanning the dates 1850 to 1920, in more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions. The collection's billheads, letterheads, envelopes, checks, and business cards document the rise of the United States as an industrial nation, in often elaborate vignettes of factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks, and hotels.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the building of Butler Library, an exhibit of more than 100 photographs decorate the bulletin board display on the third floor of Butler Library. The photographs span the decades and showcase the excavation and rise of South Hall (as it was originally named), design details throughout the building, reading rooms, services such as research assistance and student activities -- which include sleeping as well as studying!

This group of images are all taken from photograph albums dating from ca. 1855-1890 in RBML's Thomas Carlyle Papers Collection, acquired from Sotheby's at a 1932 auction. Six of the volumes bear the notes and annotations of Thomas Carlyle; volume 7 contains annotations by Carlyle's nephew, Alexander Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the nineteenth century philosopher and essayist, was the author of works including Sartor Resartus (1836), and The French Revolution (1837). He was married in 1826 to Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866). The albums include photographs of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle, their house at Cheyne Row, members of their families, and their friends in the literary and political worlds including Ruskin, Dickens, Robert Browning, and Giuseppe Mazzini. If you prefer, you can page through the albums in book form through the Internet Archive, or come to the RBML and see them in person.

This website provides a portal into the Corporation’s philanthropy from the 1870s to the 21st century.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) children were evacuated from the war zones to colonies in the war-free areas of Spain and in the south of France. Drawings by these children were collected from throughout Spain in a concerted effort of the Spanish Board of Education and the Carnegie Institute of Spain. A large group was assembled by Joseph A. Weissberger. Those presented here consist of a collection of 153 made by children aged 7 to 14. They were willed to the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University by Martin Vogel.

The images in this collection were assembled by Anne S. Goodrich (1895-2005) in 1931, when as a Christian missionary in Peking she became interested in local folk religious practices. She studied the paper gods in this collection for much of her life. After publishing her research conclusions in 1991, she donated these prints to the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University. The images are divided initially by usage: Those which were purchased to be burned immediately and serve as emissaries to heaven; and those which were purchased to be displayed for a year while offering protection to the family in a variety of ways, before being burned. The images are further divided by display locations and by the deities they represent.

The Group Research, Inc. Records, housed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, comprise a rich resource documenting the organizations, people, and campaigns of conservative activists in the United States from the early-1960s to the mid-1990s. Drawn from that collection, the items in this exhibit highlight the important role that illustrators, cartoonists and designers played in the dissemination of conservative points of view during this formative period for modern US conservative ideology.

Community Service Society Photographs is an online presentation of almost 1400 photographs (and a few illustrations) from the Community Service Society Records at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. They offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.

The Composers Forum Concerts Collection comprises over 600 hours recorded during concerts presented between 1951 and the mid-1970s in Columbia University's McMillin Theater (now Miller Theater) and at the New York Public Library's Donnell Library. The concerts, designed particularly to support young and adventurous composers, were devoted to music by contemporary American composers.

This digital exhibit features images from a small collection of photographs documenting the construction of Union Theological Seminary located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City. The third location for the Seminary, the buildings were constructed from 1908-1910.

Columbia University's commitment to the Core Curriculum extends to the University Libraries' special collections. Columbia University Libraries preserve and provide access to important editions of, and in some cases autograph manuscripts by, many of the authors taught in the Core Curriculum. Additionally, the collections include subsequent editions, translations, and adaptations, which demonstrate the transmission and reception of these works across centuries and attest to their continuing importance.

Columbia University's commitment to the Core Curriculum extends to the University Libraries' special collections. Columbia University Libraries preserve and provide access to important editions of, and in some cases autograph manuscripts by, many of the authors taught in the Core Curriculum. Additionally, the collections include subsequent editions, translations, and adaptations, which demonstrate the transmission and reception of these works across centuries and attest to their continuing importance.

In 1940, Columbia University established a fund to provide support for composers, performers, and performances of new American music through a bequest from Alice M. Ditson, wife of the noted Boston music publisher Oliver Ditson. Mrs. Ditson's selection of Columbia University to oversee the Ditson Fund was fitting, for Columbia was home to one of the oldest and most distinguished departments of music at any American university.

James Brander Matthews (1852-1929), America's first professor of dramatic literature, created a Dramatic Museum at Columbia in 1911 to supplement his teaching. He insisted that material objects and images were crucial to understanding drama, and that theater knew no geographical or chronological bounds. The differences in national style visible on the contemporary stage had their origins, he argued, in ancient local rituals and religious practice. So in addition to considerable manuscript collections and a large collection of printed books, the Dramatic Museum included 34,500 theatrical portraits (prints and photographs); 2,350 speech recordings; 35,000 eighteenth-, nineteenth- , and twentieth-century playbills; approximately 600 artworks, including costume and scenic designs and posters; 392 puppets and 128 masks; 12 models of historical theaters; and 29 stage sets. The Museum was formally dissolved and its collections dispersed in 1971. By the 1990s, the collections had all gravitated to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). ...Now, thanks to a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, RBML is creating a new collection and finding aid. Dramatic Museum Realia consists of puppets, masks, theater models and stage sets. The puppets and masks have all been photographed, and these images are presented here. The puppets come from around the world: Africa, Burma, China, England, France, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Russia, and the U.S. There are 40 large (over five feet tall) shadow puppets and approximately 350 other puppets, including six oversize marionettes made by the prominent artist Remo Bufano. Most were collected by the 1930s; many date from the nineteenth century. The masks have a similar range: they come from Africa, Ceylon, Europe, Japan, Java, Mexico, North America, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

How did early modern literature conceive the future? Scholarship of early modern literature has paid ample attention to the many ways in which time was perceived and understood, frequently emphasizing retrospective forms of historical thinking, such as memory and nostalgia. Early Modern Futures seeks to spark a conversation about the many ways in which early modern literature also thought about where things were headed. How did beliefs about future events (from the eschatological to the economic to the genealogical) shape people's actions in the present? How did early modernity understand the past in relation to the future? How was prospective historical thinking practiced through various textual and literary forms? That is, how did records, scripts, manuals, genres, or editions represent the future or anticipate their own reception? How do the modes of early modern prospection as suggested by terms like prophecy, speculation, and progression point to different theorizations of futurity? How does present scholarship receive and use the past's ideas about the future? This conference aims to explore early modernity's uniquely literary means for projecting its future, and through this to advance scholarly debates about the role and forms of historicism in early modern culture.

This exhibit features correspondence, manuscripts, notes, drafts of speeches, photographs, and memorabilia from RBML's extensive collection of Frances Perkins' papers. The physical exhibit opened on November 5, 2009 and runs through March 26, 2010.

An online presentation of the 1322 photographs, 124 postcards, 388 negatives, and 34 glass plate negatives/lantern slides, which derive from the G.E.E. Lindquist Papers archival collection at The Burke Library. They depict the people, places, and practices of Native Americans and their communities from at least 34 States, plus Canada and Mexico in the period from 1909-1953. The majority of the images were taken by G. E. E. Lindquist (1886-1967), an itinerant representative of the ecumenical Home Missions Council of the Federal Council of Churches.

The American architectural firm Greene & Greene was a partnership between the brothers Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954). The Greene & Greene Architectural Records and Papers Collection spans the years ca. 1896 - ca. 1963. The collection chiefly consists of architectural drawings (approximately 5,000) and also includes photographs, personal papers, and other manuscript material. Access to digital images of all the architectural drawings and to selected photographs are provided in the finding aid and through seven indexes: Images, Genre/Form, Geographic, Persons, Subjects, Corporate Names, and Projects.

Harlem's first great soapbox orator, Hubert H. Harrison was a brilliant and influential writer, educator, and movement builder during the early decades of the 20th century. In the words of civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, he was "the father of Harlem radicalism." Born in 1883, on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, Harrison moved to New York City in 1900, where he worked low-paying jobs, attended high school, and then earned a living as a postal clerk - all the time engaging with radical political causes. By 1911, he had become a leading activist and theoretician for the Socialist Party in New York City and soon thereafter he began actively supporting the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1917, Harrison founded the first organization (The Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the “New Negro Movement” and he published his first book, The Negro and the Nation. He opposed positions taken by Joel E. Spingarn and W.E.B. Du Bois of the NAACP during the First World War and, along with William Monroe Trotter and others he organized the 1918 Liberty Congress. The Congress, the major Black protest effort during the war, demanded enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and federal anti-lynching legislation. Beginning in 1920, he became the principal editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World, which he reshaped into a leading political and literary publication of the era. In its pages, he discussed history, politics, theater, international affairs, religion, and science. He also created a "Poetry for the People" feature, a “West Indian News Notes” column, and what he described as the first regular book review section by a Black author in “Negro newspaperdom.” In 1920 he also published his second book, When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World. Later, he would criticize Garvey's methods and actions. Harrison was a prolific speaker and writer in the 1920s during which time he also founded the broadly unitary International Colored Unity League and edited The Voice of the Negro. Harrison's unexpected death following an appendectomy on December 17, 1927, left behind his widow, four daughters, and a young son. A massive Harlem funeral spoke to his contemporary importance, but Harrison's work eventually faded from prominence. His radicalism on questions of race, class, religion, war, democracy, literature and the arts - and the fact that he was a forthright critic of individuals, organizations, and ideas of influence, were major reasons, along with his early death and the fact that he had no long lasting organizational ties, for his subsequent neglect.

The digitized images from the Hugh Ferriss Architectural Drawings and Papers Collection depict Ferriss' original architectural renderings of buildings by various architects, ca. 1918-1960, including variant designs for the United Nations buildings; the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York; Rockefeller Center in New York; La Guardia Airport in New York; National Airport in Washington, D.C.; the New York Times Building in New York; the 1939-1940 and 1964-1965 World's Fairs; the Chicago Tribune Tower; Hoover Dam; and three Frank Lloyd Wright projects including Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pa., Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Johnson Wax Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin. Also included are Ferriss' renderings of imaginary buildings, ca. 1920s-1930s, some of which were published in The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929). Ferriss' drawings of important buildings in the United States were created as a result of a nationwide tour sponsored by a Brunner grant from the Architectural League of New York in 1941. Many of these renderings were later published in Power in Buildings (1953).

This collection contains about forty broadsides regarding communal and governmental regulations imposed in various Jewish communities throughout Italy from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Cities mentioned include Florence, Venice, Ferrara, Padua, Ancona, and others. Topics addressed are synagogue behavior, market regulations, municipal workers such as firefighters, and more.

The first major exhibition of treasures from the Special Collections Libraries at Columbia in over 50 years and gives the public a glimpse of the unique resources gathered by the University since its founding in 1754. Mounted in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of Columbia, this exhibition celebrates a rich collection of original books, manuscripts, individual and corporate archives, architectural drawings, ephemera, musical scores, works of art, and artifacts, embodying over 5,000 years of human history. Draws together an unprecedented array of 250 rare and unique items from eleven Special Collections - including a Buddhist sutra dating from the year 1162 C.E., Mrs. Alexander Hamilton's wedding ring, a set model for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's application for study at Union Theological Seminary, a fragment of the Iliad on papyrus, and a 1906 photograph of Czar Nicholas II with his family.

The John H. Yardley Collection of Architectural Letterheads provides a unique view of New York City's evolution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Selected for their illustrations of buildings in lower Manhattan, these pieces of stationery include rare images of the city's commercial architecture, much of which is no longer extant. Because the letterheads are organized by street, users can chart a path through the city, one address at a time, and see New York City as it was in another era. The Yardley Collection was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by the wife of Mr. John H. Yardley in memory of her husband. Assembled over many years, the Yardley Collection reflects a sensitivity to New York's geographic and architectural heritage. These images of distinctive buildings now join the Avery Library's other strong holdings in architectural ephemera, a reflection of Avery's commitment to preserving ephemera as an essential and irreplaceable visual record of the historic built environment.

To celebrate the publication of James McGrath Morris's new biography of Joseph Pulitzer, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (HarperCollins, 2010), the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, 6th Floor East, is presenting an exhibition of the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and of his newspaper, The World, held by the RBML. The exhibition contains a variety of materials that show the working life of this truly remarkable individual. On display are letters, documents, ledgers, newspapers, photographs, and realia concerning his life, as well as material documenting Pulitzer's role in the founding of Columbia's School of Journalism and the creation of the Pulitzer Prizes. Running through July, this is the first time that this material has been shown to the public.

Project focused on materials relating to Urban's New York theater career from 1914-1933, specifically the documentation of his productions for the Ziegfeld Follies and other theater producers, and his productions for the Metropolitan Opera.

The advent of gold-stamped decoration, circa 1832, was the most important factor in the acceptance of publishers' bindings. Gold stamping brought to the mass-produced book some of the prestige associated with gold-tooled leather bindings of the pre-industrial era. In fact, stamping often imitated the decorative styles and motifs of the hand-finished book. However, gold stamping also developed its own styles and imagery that reflected the period's taste and culture.

Commonly referred to as the Samil Movement (literally "three one") for its historical date on March 1, 1919, the Korean Independence Movement was one of the earliest and most significant displays of nonviolent demonstration against Japanese rule in Korea. The Records of the Korean Independence Outbreak, currently forming part of the archives in The Burke Library, were sent from Shanghai to Charles Fahs, the librarian of the former Mission Research Library in New York, by Korean Independence leaders in exile during 1919. The typescript reports here describe events in March/April 1919 and are accompanied by a pamphlet with rare and sometimes disturbing black and white photographs illustrating the events.

The Special Correspondence Files of the Herbert Lehman Papers contain correspondence with nearly 1,000 individuals from 1864 through 1982. Beginning with letters from Lehman's family in the late nineteenth century, the series documents the range and scope of Lehman's long career in public service. In addition to family letters, the Special Correspondence Files contain letters from every President of the U. S. from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, as well as from notables such as Dean Acheson, Benjamin Cardozo, Paul Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, W. Averill Harriman, Harold Ickes, Robert F. Kennedy, Fiorello LaGuardia, Henry Morgenthau, Alfred E. Smith, Adlai Stevenson, and Robert Wagner, among many others.

This set of forty-nine delivered digital documents in the Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso Land Deeds Collection, 1900-1940s, constitutes an important testament to the often-overlooked historical and economic realities of Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, pre-1948, when entrepreneurs such as Mr. Bseiso, the owner of the archive, envisioned developing land for the sake of expanding agriculture and promoting economic modernization in Palestine. The archive includes materials detailing land purchase and ownership deeds and agreements, as well as legal permissions to use water reservoirs in Biʾr al-Sabʿ/Beersheeba, Palestine in the 1930s in and around the city center. It provides rare documentation of the modernizing activities engaged in by a renowned Palestinian family in pre-1948 Palestine.

McKim, Mead & White was one of the preeminent New York architectural firms at the turn of the twentieth century. They worked in a neo-classical style heavily influenced by the teachings of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The original Pennsylvania Station railroad terminal and the campus of Columbia University number among their most well-known projects. Forty-three photographic albums of their work reside in Avery Classics. These albums fall into three distinct categories. Twelve volumes organized thematically and by projects (i.e. William C. Whitney Residence, Office work, etc.) came from the library of James K. Smith, the last surviving partner of the firm. These albums were originally bequeathed to Amherst College, which donated the materials to Avery in 1963. Another twenty-seven volumes were donated by Walker O. Cain in 1974. Walker Cain was a former employee of McKim, Mead and White and partner in the successor firms, Steinman, Corrigill, Cain, and White; then Steinmann, Cain, and White;. and finally Walker O. Cain Associates. The final four volumes constitute progress photographs of the construction of Penn Station taken by L. H. Dreyer and other photographers. Additional archival material related to the firm can be found in Avery Library's Drawings and Archives.

At the very end of the 12th century, the prince-bishop of Malines (Mechelen in today's Belgium) funded a hospital to be run by a group of hospital sisters; these women in the coming centuries cared for the ill and ailing so well that several other dependent hospitals were funded out of this mother house in Malines. Their institution was protected by the pope, Honorius III (who also formally extended his protection to the Dominican, Franciscan and Carmelite orders), and a few years later by the local lord, Godefroid de Fontaines, bishop of Cambrai; the next pope, Innocent IV also issued a bull to the sisters (in 1234), as did pope Nicholas IV (in 1288), and pope Clement V (in 1310, from his residence in Avignon). To these five founding documents, the collection adds two more of a slightly later date. The combination of the crucial materials, all present and in outstandingly good condition, allows one to form a view of the opening moments of a women's civic and religious organization, in ways that are hardly possible in the United States.

This online exhibition catalog contains materials from the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture exhibition held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from April 4, 2006 to July 30, 2006. The exhibition featured more than 150 photographs, personal documents, posters, original artworks, and books on the New York Russian Jewish immigrant community held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Bakhmeteff Archive. The exhibition explores many of the issues and personalities discussed in the April 4-6, 2006, international conference on Russian Jewish New York.

The 1996 Centennial Exhibition of Columbia University's Department of Music, Music at Columbia: The First 100 Years, mounted at Low Library as part of the department's celebration, was a highly varied and eclectic collection of items from many different sources.

Nathaniel Fish Moore was a student at Columbia (AB 1802, MA 1805), a professor of Greek and Latin (1817-1835), an honorary degree recipient (LLD 1825), the first College Librarian (1837-1839) and the eighth Columbia President (1842-1849). This exhibition focuses on his life outside of Columbia as he devoted his time to the nascent art of photography, in particular the salt print paper-based photographic process. As an early amateur photographer, Moore prepared his own chemicals and papers. He captured views of New York City and the Highlands of the Hudson area, his family and even a few self-portraits. Because salt prints are fragile and unstable, they have been digitized for long-term preservation.

The New York Real Estate Brochure Collection was donated to Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library by Yale Robbins, Henry Robbins, and David Magier in 1986. The collection consists of over 9,200 advertising brochures, floor plans, price lists, and related materials that document residential and commercial real estate development in the five boroughs of New York and outlying vicinities from the 1920s to the 1970s.

The Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH) was founded by historian and journalist Allan Nevins in 1948 and is credited with launching the establishment of oral history archives internationally. At over 10,000 interviews, the Oral History Archives is one of the largest oral history collections in the United States. The Oral History Archives at Columbia is housed at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Butler Library and is open to all.

George Arthur Plimpton (1855-1936) was a publisher, author, and book collector, born in Walpole, Massachusetts. He assembled a remarkable collection of manuscripts and books illuminating the history of education. Describing his sixty years of collecting in the preface to his first book, The Education of Shakespeare, Plimpton wrote: "It has been my privilege to get together the manuscripts and books which are more or less responsible for our present civilization, because they are the books from which the youth of many centuries have received their education." The collection was given to Columbia in 1936. Drawn exclusively from the Plimpton Collection, the exhibition includes manuscripts and books from medieval times through the early 20th century, including many of the manuscripts and books that were used to illustrate Plimpton's The Education of Shakespeare and The Education of Chaucer, and David Eugene Smith's Rara Arithmetica. Additional sections of the exhibition deal with handwriting and education for women, two of Plimpton's particular interests.

The Papers of John Jay is an image database and indexing tool comprising some 13,000 documents (more than 30,000 page images) scanned chiefly from photocopies of original documents. Most of the source material was assembled by Columbia University's John Jay publication project staff during the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of the late Professor Richard B. Morris.

A printed book and a manuscript codex may contain the same text, but one can argue that the latter is inherently richer. The printing press produced a multitude of identical copies, but each manuscript is unique and individual. In a manuscript, each page had to be carefully prepared and every letter required painstaking work. Ultimately, each manuscript contains more than just the text within it. Isaac Mendelsohn, author of the first catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts at Columbia, wrote, "An old Hebrew book is...more than a mere collection of bound sheets on which a given text is [written]. The notes on the flyleaves, the remarks on the margins the names of its various owners, and the countries in which it saw service actually make it into two books - one containing the text, the passive part, and the other the history of the persons who owned and used it. This exhibit attempts to show the second kind of book: the book that tells a story about its authors, its owners, and its users. Occasionally, the story is found within the main portion of the text, but it is also found in the paratext: in the wine stains on a Passover Haggadah, in the candle wax in a prayer book, or in an odd notation on a title page or in a colophon.

This collection contains photographic material from the Frederick Fried Coney Island collection, 1847-2001 housed at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University. The photographs depict the rich public life and popular culture of Coney Island from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, illustrating amusement rides; buildings and structures; parades, contests, and performances; the boardwalk; transportation; and people, both visitors to and employees of Coney Island's various attractions, amusements, and spectacles. A significant portion of this collection consists of the personal archive of William F. Mangels (1867-1958), which was purchased by Fried in 1955. Mangels was a German immigrant entrepreneur, designer, and inventor who was a major figure in the development of the American amusement park. Located at Coney Island and incorporated in 1908, the W.F. Mangels Company was a prominent manufacturer of carousels and other amusement rides, including the Whip and the Tickler. Also a historian of the amusements industry and collector, Mangels founded the American Museum of Public Recreation (1929-1955) at West Eighth Street and Neptune Avenue at Coney Island. This digital collection has numerous photographs of scale models of designs for amusements across the country by William F. Mangels, photographs of his installations at the American Museum of Public Recreation, and portraits of Mangels and his business partners. This collection is also strong in chronicling the heyday of Coney Island's three main amusement parks--Dreamland (1904-1911), Luna Park (1903-1944), and Steeplechase Park (1897-1964)--from 1903 to 1911. Subjects include carousels, carousel animals, demolition and fires, employees and visitors, mechanical rides, roller coasters, and recreation. There are also many photographs of the "Nickel Empire" era, circa 1920-1933, including visuals of baths and pools, beaches, restaurants and hotels, and rides.

Political Ecologies in the Renaissance brings together eleven scientific texts from Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It features canonical and non-canonical science books and covers seven topics: mining, magnetism, navigation, astronomy, the art of war, hydraulics and hydrostatics, and astrology. Each of the texts featured here focuses on human engagement with the natural world, whether it be through observation, experimentation, and/or the manipulation of natural resources. But the texts do not only represent early examples of scientific culture; rather, they are politically resonant, for man's use of natural resources and scientists' observations of the world around them had a profound impact on the early modern world, and provoked and/or enabled religious, social, and political controversies. Many of the papers in the "Commons and Collectivities: Political Ecologies in the Renaissance" conference home in on man's relationship with the natural world and its political implications, and this online exhibition is meant to complement those essays.

This online exhibition is meant to accompany a day-long symposium at Columbia University on April 27, 2012. The exhibition, along with the conference, focuses on the relation between literature and the media in which it is conveyed. The symposium examines the extent to which the material forms of texts can contribute to the reading of literature as well as the construction of literary history, and, conversely, what literary analysis can contribute to the study of books as material objects.

Focusing on players, coaches, playing fields, and the games won and lost, this exhibition traces the arc of Columbia's football program from its inception in 1870 to the present day. As one of the oldest college programs in the country, Columbia Football has a rich and fascinating history which the University Archives is delighted to share and celebrate through this display of historical materials from our collection. This online exhibition is based on a physical exhibition of the same name which was on display in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from August 26 to December 20, 2019.

A collection of Russian and early Soviet music scores published from 1904 to 1938. Numerous composers and lyricists (primarily Russian but also European and American) are represented. Most scores were published in Moscow or Leningrad. Other imprints include Rostov-na-Donu, Kiev, Kharʹkov, and Tiflis. Most scores are popular music, jazz or dance music. The covers were designed by many different artists. The collection includes musical settings of poems by Esenin, Lebedev-Kumach and Mayakovsky among others. <p>A detailed introduction to this collection can be found in <a href="https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:76hdr7sqwp">Academic Commons</a></p>

This online exhibition catalog contains selections from the Columbia University Libraries exhibition on view at the Bakhmeteff Archive, Butler Library from December 1, 2002 to February 28, 2003, timed to coincide with celebrations of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. The exhibition features objects drawn from the Imperial Corps of Pages collection, Bakhmeteff Archive. The objects include photographs, documents, theater programs, invitations and menus. The catalog also provides historical information about the Corps of Pages.

A sixteenth-century Italian architect and theoretician, Sebastiano Serlio was influential in canonizing the classical orders of architecture as the author of seven books on architecture, collectively known as Tutte l'opere d'architettura. The sixth book in the series, On Domestic Architecture, wasn't published in Serlio's lifetime but survived in manuscript form and was acquired by Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library in 1924. Significant not only for its rarity, the sixth book is arguably the most impactful as it defines the first typology of Western domestic architecture. Serlio's designs accommodate every strata of society from the poor, to the emerging bourgeoisie, to a palace for the King. His scheme for housing conceives a model for a new urban form -- the modern city based on an economic social construct. The digital files presented here comprise recto, verso and selected watermarks representing 73 original plates, and provide an exceptional opportunity to view this rare manuscript in great detail. The broader Digital Serlio Project provides online access to not only the unpublished masterwork but new research on topics as diverse as the materiality of the manuscript's paper and the creation of national typologies of domestic architecture in the form of essays contributed by a cohort of international scholars and students. Avery's significant holdings of the published editions of Serlio's complete works have also been newly digitized, and the entire corpus is accessible from the Project page.

The diversity and splendor of Sergei Diaghilev's world of Russian ballet and opera seasons in Paris was on display at the Chang Octagon Exhibition Room. The exhibition features selections from the Bakhmeteff Archive and Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections. The exhibiton took place in the Chang Octagon Exhibition Room, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, March 16 through June 26, 2009.

Website for The Seymour B. Durst Old York Library collection at the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. The collection consists of more than 40,000 objects including historic photographs, maps, pamphlets, postcards, books, and New York City memorabilia from the 18th century to the 1980s.

Thomas de Waal has donated the audio files and digitized transcripts of the interviews he conducted for his books Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (co-authored with Carlotta Gall; NYU Press, 1997) and Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (NYU Press, 2003) to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Mr. de Waal conducted these interviews with some sixty participants and policymakers during the struggle between former Soviet Republics Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, and Russia’s conflict with the breakaway republic of Chechnya. These files are an important resource for scholars and journalists alike.

Digital collection of archival and other rare Tibetan Studies holdings, primarily in the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University; includes documents and photographs from the Tharchin Collection and the Lama Anagarika Govinda papers, 1945-1993, as well as some materials from the Tibet Information Network (TIN) Archives and the Meg McLagan Collection. Additionally, the Collection includes digital images of some fifty rare books and a limited amount of audio-visual materials, such as lectures by Tibetan Buddhist teachers, and oral-history and related interviews with Tibetan and Chinese scholars and cadres in China and with Tibetans living in exile on their lives and historical events in the 20th century.

Review site for media digitized and published as part of the Time-Based Media strategic initiative

Ulysses Kay (1917-1995) wrote more than one hundred forty compositions in a wide range of forms -- five operas, over two dozen large orchestral works, more than fifty voice or choral compositions, over twenty chamber works, a ballet, and numerous other compositions for voice, solo instruments or dancer, film, and television.

More than 150 scrapbooks comprise the core of the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana, part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Together, these volumes contain a diverse array of manuscripts, photographs, pamphlets, artwork, clippings, and ephemera primarily related to African-American history from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. At the time of its creation from about 1900 to 1950, the collection's curator, L.S. Alexander Gumby, explained that this "History of the Negro in Scrapbook . . . could well be called 'The Unwritten History'" of the United States, due to the lack of general scholarly attention paid to African Americans by contemporary historians. This exhibition introduces visitors to the remarkable Gumby and situates his life and project in the context of the Harlem Renaissance--his acquaintances included luminaries such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes--and in relation to other contemporary pioneers of African-American history such as Arthur Schomburg and Carter G. Woodson. Showcasing pages from nearly fifty of Gumby's scrapbooks, it highlights both the rare and the seemingly mundane items that Gumby argued could combine to document an otherwise forgotten history of the United States and its African American contributors.

Initially conceived as a fundraiser for the University's athletics teams, The Varsity Show has grown into Columbia University's oldest performing arts tradition. It is an annual extravaganza that has launched many students on their paths to careers in the arts and elicited cheers and blushes from those in the Columbia community who find themselves subject of its satire. This online exhibition is an expansion of a physical exhibit created in 2004 to mark the 110th anniversary of The Varsity Show. ... The distinguished roster of Columbians who have participated in The Varsity Show includes a who's who of show business talent and achievement. Among the more noteable alums are Oscar Hammerstein (CC 1916), Richard Rodgers (CC 1923), Lorenz Hart (CC 1918), I.A.L. Diamond (CC 1941), Herman Wouk (CC 1934), Terrance McNally (CC 1960), and Ed Kelban (CC 1960) who wrote the lyrics for A Chorus Line.

Dr White was the founder in 1900 and President, 1900-1939, of Bible Teachers' College, which was later known as Bible Teachers Training School, renamed the Winona Bible School, and then the Biblical Seminary of New York. In 1966, Biblical Seminary became New York Theological Seminary. Wilbert Webster White was renowned for his development of an inductive system of Bible Study, emphasizing knowledge of the Bible rather than knowledge about the Bible. His Papers contain an Address by him on the Biblio-centric Curriculum.

Online version of a 2017 exhibit showcasing early printed works by Martin Luther, primarily from the holdings of the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University.

Columbia University was one of the first institutions in the United States with a Yiddish program, and its Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry is still a critical resource in the study of the many variants of the Yiddish Language. In honor of the digitization of the LCAAJ fieldnotes, Columbia University Libraries mounted an exhibition highlighting Yiddish at Columbia - both the vibrant academic research in the area as well as the deep and extensive collections.