The Andrew Sarris Papers are comprised of correspondence, drafts and manuscripts, clippings, printed ephemera, periodicals, monographs, photographs, and audio recordings related to the career and personal life of renowned film critic Andrew Sarris. The materials span several decades, from the inception of his career as a film critic and theorist in the mid-1950s to the last years of his long tenure at The Village Voice in the late 1980s..

The Chinese oral history project collection (中國口述歷史項目檔案) provides a wealth of information on the development of the project and its interviews with eminent Chinese political figures abroad in the United States and Hong Kong from 1958 to 1980s. The highlights of the collection consist of the administrative subject files, correspondence, interview photographs and reports, transcript drafts, collected autobiographies and manuscripts, audio recordings, and card files of names mentioned in the transcripts.

The David Lloyd collection on Lao She consists of records relating to the publications and translations of Lao She's work during and after his stay in New York, dating from 1946 to 1957. Materials in the collection include correspondence, accounts, manuscripts, and a portrait of Lao She.

Douglas Putnam Haskellan (1899-1979) was an American writer, architecture critic and magazine editor. This collection contains correspondence, memos, articles, speeches, lectures, transcripts, clippings, notes, printed matter, photographs, audiotapes, and memorabilia mainly relating to Douglas Haskell's editorship at Architectural Forum and his professional activities. The collection includes items dating from 1866 to 1979, with the majority of materials dating from the period of 1949 to 1964.

This collection is made up of architectural drawings, correspondence, specifications, contracts, invoices, minutes, financial statements, patents, advertisements, photographs, photograph album, test results and reports, memoranda, tile samples, factory order cards, and other materials pertaining to The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company's projects. The dates of the materials span 1866-1985, with bulk dates 1890-1942. The architectural records include structural, decorative, and acoustical sample products and fragments. Also included are materials added to the files by George Collins (1917-1993), Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Prof. Collins secured the donation of this archive in 1963, and remained its custodian until it was transferred to the Drawings and Archives Collection at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library in 1988. The records document Prof. Collins' research efforts, as well as the Company's projects in forty states (including District of Columbia), four Canadian provinces, and eleven other foreign countries.

The Hu Shih diaries comprises six microfilm reels of diaries by Hu Shih, a Chinese philosopher, essayist, educator, scholar, and diplomat of the 20th century. Materials include in the collection are Hu Shih's diaries, which contain correspondence, news clippings, lecture notes, letters dating from 1921 to 1935, as well as the writings of Hu Shih's father, Hu Chuan, who was a civil official of the Qing Imperial Court.

John Leonard (1939 -2008) was an American literary and cultural critic best known for his extensive writing on literature, television, media, politics and American culture and his work as head editor of The New York Times Book Review in the 1970s. The John Leonard papers include drafts of Leonard's reviews, essays, essay collections, and works of fiction and nonfiction. The collection also includes his correspondence with prominent literary and cultural figures, his research and business files, personal memorabilia, photographs, signed artwork, printed matter, posthumous tributes to Leonard, and audio-visual material.

Marable was a leading figure in African-American studies as well as a historian, social theorist, and political activist. The collection includes appointment books, biographical information, budgets, clippings, correspondence, drafts, lecture notes, manuscripts, photographs, proposals, reports, speeches, syllabi, and teaching materials.

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.

The collection was originally housed in several filing cabinets in and near Miwa Kai's office space in Kent Hall, which she shared with Wm. Theodore de Bary. Kai kept well-organized files, and most of her original file names have been retained. In addition to the papers she collected and created through the course of her work and personal life, she also inherited papers created by Howard P. Linton and Ryusaku Tsunoda, which she incorporated into her own files and enhanced with supplementary material and her own hand-written notes.