Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

This collection is in deep storage. Patrons must use the digital copies in the Music Library, and new user copies can be made from, the digital versions. This collection can only be recalled for the use of PRD staff.

The Alice M. Ditson Fund was established at Columbia University in 1940 and is still active in its primary function of providing financial support to composers, performances, and recordings of contemporary American music. The fund also gives out the annual Ditson Conductor's Award, established in 1945, which honors conductors who have a distinguished record of championing American music. The collection includes files regarding the selection of this prize across several decades, as well as financial records, meeting minutes, applicant files, and subject files for the general Fund since its creation.

Correspondence, programs, clippings, and other theatrical memorabilia relating the the careers of Alice and Rita Lawrence.

Approximately 12,000 letters to Allan Nevins from various correspondents including James Truslow Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Willa Cather, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Van Wyck Brooks, Robert Frost, Newton D. Baker, Archibald MacLeish, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Carl Sandburg, and Henry Wallace; notes and typescripts for Nevins' books including Emergence of Lincoln, The Ordeal of Democracy, Rockefeller, and History and Historians, with notes by editor Ray A. Billington; miscellaneous transcripts, clippings, newspapers, and photographs. Also, autograph letters and manuscripts by presidents, Civil War figures, financiers, politicians, and authors. There are also the Brand Whitlock World War I Diaries and letters to him by such people as Herbert Hoover, Gen. John J. Pershing, and others.

The memoir "Rol' chekho-slovakov v osvoboditel'nom belom dvizhenii v Rossii v 1918 godu" primarily discusses the Civil War in western Siberia in 1918, and touches upon cooperation between Czechoslovak forces and the Whites in early 1918.

Woodblocks, linoleum blocks, wood and linoleum tools, wooden types, metal types, books, proofs, and special printings. Included are woodblocks and linoleum blocks of illustrations and decorations for Walt Whitman's SHORT STORIES (Columbia University Press, 1927), De La Motte Fouqué's UNDINE (Limited Editions Club, 1930), and Sir Walter Scott's IVANHOE (Limited Editions Club, 1940). There are several metal types designed and cast for Lewis; full or nearly full alphabets of special wooden types designed and cut by Lewis in both 216 pt. and 144 pt. sizes; specimens of his wood and linoleum tools, mainly of his own manufacture; books containing illustrations, decorations, and special types by Lewis; proofs of bookplates he designed; and proofs and special printings of various plates.

This collection includes approximately 75 unique poems by Allen Tobias, including multiple drafts of some, which incorporate of Ginsberg's suggestions. Ginsberg's annotations include word changes, adjustments to line breaks, questions, suggestions about structure, additional lines, and general supportive comments. In addition, there is Tobias' research file on Ginsberg.

Papers of Wardwell. These papers chiefly concern the 1917-1918 American Red Cross Mission to Russia, in which Wardwell served, and his involvement in efforts to support trade with and aid to Russia in 1919-1924; he was chairman of the Russian Famine Fund in that period. There are a few items concerning the 1941 W.A. Harriman-Lord Beaverbrook mission to Russia, in which Wardwell participated. Materials on the Red Cross Mission are chiefly from May-October 1918, when Wardwell commanded it; they consist of correspondence, reports, documents, many photographs, and transcribed excerpts from Wardwell's diary and letters home. Major correspondents include Georgiĭ Chicherin, Lev Trot︠s︡kiĭ, and Raymond Robins. Records of Wardwell's efforts in regard to Russia in 1919-1924 consist of extensive correspondence files with prominent Americans, such as Robins and Herbert Hoover, manuscripts, related printed materials, and Wardwell's diary of his trip to Russia in the fall of 1922.

Krant︠s︡' memoirs discuss her experiences in Petrograd during the Civil War, including her arrest and imprisonment, and also her experiences in rural Novgorod and Pskov provinces.

Collection of artists' books created by artists participating in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; donated by the founder of the coalition Beau Beausoleil between December 2019 and March 2020. Each participating book artist was asked to complete three books over the course of a year that reflected both the strength and fragility of books, but also showed the endurance of the ideas within them.

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is an arts initiative and an archival collection conceived as a response to violence and directed at creating shared cultural spaces. The project and the collection were initiated by Beau Beausoleil in 2007 following the March 5 car bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street (the street of the booksellers) in Baghdad, Iraq. Beausoleil writes, "We are not a project of pity or healing; we are a project of Witness, Memory, and Solidarity," and "Free speech and the free exchange of ideas are at the core of what al-Mutanabbi Street represents to us. We do not attempt to speak for the Iraqi people, they have their own voice. Rather, we want them to know that we see them and hear them in their own struggle for a more just society, and that we will not let anyone in the West forget them." As of 2023, the archive holds approximately 260 artists' books, 200 prints, 100 letterpress broadsides, 57 photographs, and a collection of bookmarks, made by over 600 poets, writers, and artists from twenty countries. The artists' books are cataloged individually in CLIO, and are described as a group in the record https://clio.columbia.edu/archives/15498023. The project also produced an anthology, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad's "Street of the Booksellers," published by PM Press in 2012. Edited by Beau Beausoleil and Deema K. Shehabi, the anthology includes writing by Iraqis and an international group of poets and writers. Copies are cataloged in CLIO.

The memoirs "Zhemchuzhina zapoliaria" concern the Vorkuta concentration camp in the 1930s, discussing in particular prisoners whom the author met. Among the prisoners he discusses were 1,300 "Trotskii-ite" prisoners who arrived at the camp in 1936. They went on a mass hunger strike, and in 1938 were massacred by the authorities. (Page 54 of the manuscript is missing.).

Correspondence, notes, and printed material of Swihart, relating to research for his book, SINCE MRS. EDDY. Most of the material relates to Augusta Stetson and Annie C. Bill and the churches they founded as off-shoots of Christian Science. In addition to the box of manuscript material there is one box of printed religious tracts and publications relating to the Christian Science and related religions.

The collection consists of 38 letters from Bessie to his friend, Loretta Frances Fokes Lish, about his life, political views, current writing, and Gordon Lish.

Correspondence, telephone logs, lecture/administrative files, manuscripts, research files, personal papers, reviews, press clippings, tearsheets, and memorabilia relating to the many projects Toffler and his wife worked on from 1950 to 1985. The collection is divided into closed and open series. Closed files include all correspondence; telephone logs; administrative files pertaining to lectures, contracts, and business memos; and personal papers. Open files consist of clippings, notes, manuscripts, publishers' "dead matter," tearsheets of articles and books, press clippings, interviews, and galleys. The correspondence includes letters from a great variety of people, such as Betty Friedan, Jonas Salk, Newt Gingrich, Ed Koch, and many other politicians and celebrities. There are research files for virtually every project that Toffler was involved with, including his books "Future Shock" and "The Third Wave." The press clippings files are extensive and range from research topics to reviews, and cover countries from Australia to Switzerland. Lecture files also from Toffler's television/video production compnay, Triwave Productions, Inc., which include scripts, contracts, and materials relating to all stages of production. The many manuscripts, proofs, and galleys are in various stages of revision and include Toffler's extensive corrections and notes.

Manuscripts, galley proofs, and books by Amadeus Grabau. The manuscripts drafts are autograph and typed, occasionally accompanied by notes, correspondence, and related materials.

Correspondence, memoranda, manuscripts, typescripts, manuscript notes, proofs, photocopies of original letters, manuscripts, documents, and other supporting materials used in the research, writing and publication of the American Bar Association's "War Powers Study." The correspondence and memoranda include applications for research positions with the project and communications among the project staff. By far the majority of the papers consist of heavily corrected manuscripts and typescript drafts of each chapter for the multi-volume series entitled: WAR, FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND CONSTITUTIONAL POWERS (Cambridge, Mass., Ballinger, 1976-). Each chapter's drafts are followed by extensive working papers which include research papers written by the staff, photocopies and transcripts of original letters, manuscripts and documents, inventories and calendars of historical documents, and excerpts from printed sources.

The records include administrative documents, minutes, clippings, marketing materials, scrapbooks, posters, photographs, and audiovisual material that reflect the ABA's and its membership's many activities in the last 124 years, from annual conferences and training events, to specific marketing campaigns and intiatives such as Indie Next and the White House library.

Papers of the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China consist of correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes, committee files, membership records, financial records, fund raising records, motion pictures, audio tapes, phonograph records, photographs, posters, publications of ABMAC and other printed materials. Also included are the files of related Chinese relief organizations: Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, 1954-1969; American Emergency Relief, 1941-1946; United Services to China, 1941-1977. Of particular interest are approximately 6,000 photographs of Chinese medical colleges, hospitals, laboratories and personnel and 45 phonograph records including speeches by such ABMAC supporters as Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek, Pearl S. Buck, Wendell Willkie, Fiorello LaGuardia and a number of movie stars

The collection is principally of New Hampshire documents, dated 1745-1760 and numbering 240 items, of which all but one are deeds. The remainder of the material consists of twelve South Carolina items for dates from 1709 to 1836, being grants, deeds, bonds, and other legal and business papers; and two North Carolina documents - a will of 1779 and a land grant of 1787.

The winners of the American Institute of Graphic Artists awards known as "The Fifty Books of the Year" from 1923 to the present. RBML also has some of the cover award winners.

Posters, catalogs, book covers, printed materials and ephemera related to the AIGA book collection (winners of the American Institute of Graphic Artists awards known as "The Fifty Books of the Year" from 1923 to the present)

Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, agenda, and related printed matter concerning the programs of the American Library Association's (ALA) International Relations Committee, 1941-1967. These were the working files of Jack Dalton who was Director of ALA's International Relations Office, 1956-1959. The internal office files of the Board and Committee are also included.

Manuscripts, photographs, drawings, watercolors, and printed materials relating to the mission of the American Relief Administration in Soviet Russia in the early 1920s, during the famine of those years. There are manuscripts by William N. Haskell (chief of the mission) and Alvin E. Blomquist based on their experiences. There are many photographs concerning the mission's work, and the famine; there are also photographs of Communist Party leaders Lev Kamenev, Maksim Litvinov, and Nikolai Semashko. The drawings and watercolors, which are by an undentified artist, are of Simbirsk.

Art and realia from the American Type Founders Company Typographic Museum includes the type specimen, paper molds, Goudy stuff, printing presses, the Schiller pictures made from type ornaments, the printing blocks, glass slides, the stained glass windows, woodblocks and framed artworks. Partial lists available upon request. Many items purchased from the American Type Founders Company were included into the Book Arts Ephemera collection, while books on the history of printing and printing processes from the 15th to the 20th century are being cataloged individually for the RBML Book Arts collection.

The papers include correspondence, manuscripts, and printed materials. Correspondence consists of letters from a number of important cultural figures in the emigration, including: Ivan Bunin, Zinaida Guppius, Aleksandr Kuprin, Pavel Mili︠u︡kov, Alekseĭ Remizov, Nadezhda Teffi, and Alekseĭ Tolstoĭ; there are also one or two letters each from Konstantin Balḿont, Dmitriĭ Merezhkovskiĭ, Ili︠́a︡ Repin, Fedor Shali︠a︡pin, and Marina T︠S︡vetaeva. There are manuscripts of several works by Shpoli︠a︡nskiĭ, including his memoirs, "Poezd na tretém puti" (New York, 1954).

Two typescript memoirs (in all 14 p.) - "Poezdka Grafa Palena..v Amu-Darínskiĭ otdel i Khivinskoe Khanstvo" and "Vremennoe Pravitelśtvo i ego vysochestvo Emir Seid-Alim Bukhary Blagorodnoĭ" (concerns a visit by representatives of the Provisonal government to the Emir of Bukhara in April 1917).

Materials include indexed documents and reports created by Amnesty International.