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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.

This collection consists of the work conducted by the Fact Finding Commission appointed to investigate the disturbances at Columbia in April and May 1968. The materials include the audio-tapes, unorganized and uncorrected transcripts, and the final transcripts of the testimony from the hearings held from May 7 to July 25, 1968. There are also the general exhibits used in the hearings and a collection of printed materials (newspapers and magazines) covering the events of 1968.

Letters to his long-time friend, Ben Belitt, a creative poet and translator and critic of Spanish poets, particularly Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda. 7 of the letters are from 1936-37, 4 from 1952-1964, and 5 from 1970-78. They are of a personal nature, primarily concerning the authors' writings of the time. The latest group also has carbons of Belitt's replies.

Correspondence, articles, research notes, manuscripts, illustrations, printed materials, and a phonograph record collected by Schwartz in compiling his HART CRANE, A REFERENCE GUIDE (Boston, G.K. Hall [1983]). Among the correspondents are Alfred Gilman and Allen Tate. There is also a xerox copy of the script for a production of "The Bridge" by Hart Crane as a dance drama performed at Bennington College in the early 1930s