Correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, photographs, phonograph and tape recordings, and printed files. Included are Cerf's personal correspondence files, 1929-1945, and the diaries and scrapbooks which he maintained from his school days throughout his active career. The diaries, in date-book format, contain terse notes on Cerf's meetings with authors and friends, on his travels and publishing activities; the scrapbooks contain correspondence and photographs, as well as memorabilia and printed items, and were annotated by Cerf and his wife, Phyllis Fraser Cerf Wagner. Also in the collection are manuscripts and proofs for Cerf's books including "The Laugh's on Me""Treasury of Atrocious Puns""The Sound of Laughter""Stories to Make You Feel Better", and "At Random: the Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf", which was edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Albert Erskine, 1977. The papers also include condolence letters written at the time of Cerf's death, photographs and photo albums,certificates and awards, and miscellaneous printed material, including Random House and Modern Library catalogues. Among the major correspondents are: Truman Capote, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, J. Edgar Hoover, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, John Lindsay, Joshua Logan, John O'Hara, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Rodgers, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman, and Robert Penn Warren

The collection documents the career and personal life of Turkish-American electronic music composer, record producer, journalist and cultural critic, photographer, and filmmaker İlhan Mimaroğlu (1926-2012). It includes materials from each of Mimaroğlu's professional interests and activities, the bulk of which date from the early 1950s until his death in 2012.

Correspondence, manuscripts, lectures, notes, diaries, notebooks, reports, financial records, blueprints, photographs, and printed materials of Y.C. James Yen and the IIRR concerned with the development, sharing, and financing innovative methods of teaching, improving agriculture, health and family planning, and education in impoverished villages. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Pearl Buck, William O. Douglas, Nelson Rockefeller, and DeWitt Clinton.

The correspondence, research, and teaching files of French-American cultural historian and Columbia University professor emeritus Jacques Barzun (1907-2012).

Jacques Judah Lyons, hazzan, rabbi and community leader, was born in Surinam and emigrated to Philadelphia in the early 1800s. Minister of the New York Congregation Shearith Israel for 38 years, he gathered extensive materials on early Jewish history in the United States, Canada and the West Indies. His papers include manuscripts, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, notebooks, photographs and a Sansom ship's log book. Contains material relating to Jews in North and South America generally and more specifically to Congregation Shearith Israel and the Jews in New York, the Touro Synagogue and cemetery and the Jews in Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and the West Indies. Also contains material relating to Jews in the wars of the United States, correspondence of the Jews with George Washington and items relating to Haym Salomon. Collection consists of manuscript material and five notebooks and three scrapbooks of Lyons. Contains also material not listed in calendar consisting of sermons by Lyons, a manuscript prayer book used in Surinam and a guide for religious ceremonies at Congregation Shearith Israel, as well as letters written during the Civil War period and correspondence relating to the personal life and career of Lyons.

The collection includes the personal papers and correspondence of the Bradford King family of Rochester. Among the papers are the diaries of Bradford King, the son of Gideon King who settled near Rochester in 1797. Bradford left this area after his father's death in 1798, but returned many years later. The diaries cover the period from June, 1811 to April, 1874. During some years the entries are scattered or very brief; in others the notes are voluminous. Included in the correspondence are four volumes of letters from Bradford King to his brother Moses King. Also in the collection are the diaries and personal papers of Moses Bradford King, son of Bradford King, who was a prominent Rochester druggist. Moses Bradford King wrote and published a pamphlet which advocated changes in the calendar for the twentieth century. Much of the correspondence consists of letters written between the two daughters of Moses B. King, Ella G. King and Ada M. King. For a time Ella and Ada King operated the King Seminary for Young Ladies and Children in Rochester. When the school closed, Ella King went west and taught in an Indian school in South Dakota. Ada remained in Rochester where she tutored high school and college students. In 1944, at the age of 80, she enrolled for courses at the University of Rochester extension school, becoming the University's oldest co-ed. She died at the age of 100 in 1964.

Correspondence and manuscripts of Van Doren, consisting of letters, poems, short stories, novels, plays, radio broadcast transcripts ("Invitation to Learning"), diaries, critical works, proofs, and printed works. Correspondents include Louise Bogan, Philip Booth, Babette Deutsch, Richard Eberhart, T.S. Eliot, John Gould Fletcher, Herbert Gorman, E.W. Howe, Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Edgar Lee Masters, Lewis Mumford, Hyam Plutzik, Allen Tate, and Louis Zukovsky. Also, extensive correspondence with Robert Lax and Thomas Merton, as well as manuscripts by these two authors.

Maurice Peress (1930-2017) was an American orchestra conductor, arranger, author, and educator. The papers include audio and video recordings, clippings, contracts, correspondence, diaries, memorabilia, notebooks, photographs, posters, programs, research materials, reviews, scores, scrapbooks, and working files, sketches, and other materials.

The Norman Studer Papers document his career as both an educator and ardent Catskill folklorist. The collection includes significant material relating to his work as director of the Downtown Community School in New York City and Camp Woodland in the Catskills.

The Paul Leser Papers document not only the life and career of anthropologist Paul Leser, but also contain materials pertaining to Leser's sister, Maria Lingemann and her husband Heinrich Lingemann, and earlier members of the Leser family. Although the collection contains correspondence between Paul and his brother, Albert (Leser) Lestoque, a separate collection, the Albert (Leser) Lestoque Papers, held at the University at Albany's Department of Special Collections & Archives documents the life and career of Paul Leser's brother as well as providing additional Leser family documents and material.