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Samuel Roth (1893-1974)—writer, publisher, entrepreneur, and all-around schemer—is best known for publishing unauthorized excerpts of James Joyce's Ulysses in the United States, and for being the plaintiff in a landmark case before the United States Supreme Court that redefined what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. The Samuel Roth Papers contain annotated books, manuscripts, court documents, business records, copyright statements, unpublished typescripts (by Roth and others), publishing advertisements and materials, as well as correspondence.

Marie Runyon was an activist and former New York State legislator. Born in North Carolina in 1915, she moved to Morningside Heights and in 1963 began a decades long fight against Columbia University over its real estate practices and expansion in the neighborhood. Runyon founded the Morningside Tenants Committee as well as other tenants' organizations, and she brought a number of cases to court to prevent her eviction from her apartment at 130 Morningside Drive. She also worked for many political and service organizations throughout her career.

Erica Jong (b. 1942) is an American writer and teacher whose works are often associated with sexuality and feminism. The Erica Jong Papers consist of drafts of Jong's works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. The collection also includes project and research files, correspondence, personal memorabilia, photographs, audio-visual materials and printed matter.

Arthur Mitchell (1934-2018) was an American ballet dancer, choreographer, and founder and director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. This collection contains materials related to his career as a dancer with the New York City Ballet, and his later professional work with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and others. The collection includes administrative records, appointment books, correspondence, invitations, notes, notebooks, photographs, posters, programs, and audio and video recordings.

This collection documents the career of Vera Connolly, journalist, editor, and fiction author, through her drafts, notes, and correspondence. Connolly's articles, published in popular magazines such as Good Housekeeping,Colliers, and Woman's Day, ranged in topic from financial advice for married women to juvenile delinquency, prison reform, sweatshops, and poor living conditions on Indian reservations.

The Hettie Jones Papers contains correspondence, writings, and teaching materials related to Hettie Jones' career as a writer, editor, and teacher in the New York City Beat and Downtown literary scene, from the 1960s through the 2000s. Included are manuscripts from Jones' numerous books of poetry and children's and young adult novels, as well as her 1990 autobiography, How I Became Hettie Jones. The collection also features materials from her time as co-editor of Totem Press and Yugen literary journal. A small amount of material pertaining to Jones' former husband, the poet LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, including unpublished early manuscripts and photographs is also here.

The Morningside Area Alliance is an organization working for community improvement on behalf of its member institutions in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in New York City. The organization was founded as Morningside Heights Inc. in 1947 through joint action of fourteen Morningside Institutions--Columbia University, St. Luke's Hospital, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Teacher's College, Barnard College, Corpus Christi Church, Home for Old Men and Aged Couples, International House, Jewish Theological Seminary, Juilliard School of Music, St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's School, The Riverside Church, Union Theological Seminary, and the Women's Hospital of St. Luke's Center--with the expressed purpose of "[promoting] the improvement of Morningside Heights as an attractive, residential, educational, and cultural area." The collection includes much, if not all, of the material that was created by the organization as part of its daily business from 1947 to 1992, when the materials were accessioned into University Archives at Columbia University. This includes records of the Board of Directors and the various Committees within the Alliance; assorted publications, reports, pamphlets, and theses both acquired and created by the organization; files of the different offices within the organization; maps, plans, and photographs used and created by the Alliance for its work; and the collected materials and files created for the organization's projects in different subject areas--specifically buildings, community services and programs, public safety, schools, and the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan. The collection also includes a large quantity of material rearranged into subject files on different areas of concern within the organization.

The China Information Committee 中國情報委員會 was established in late 1937 as part of the newly-formed Chinese Ministry of Information, an organ of the Chinese Nationalist Party (guomindang 國民黨), to produce propaganda for a foreign audience regarding the ongoing hostilities between China and Japan. The collection contains a series of propaganda news releases in English produced during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), reports on the wartime Chinese economy, war crimes, refugees, and the gradual retreat and relocation of industries and offices to Chongqing in West China.