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.

The Ta-Chun Hsu papers (徐大春檔案) document his personal life and provide a glimpse of his career in China and in the United States. The bulk of the papers consist of correspondence related to his family and his personal life as a Chinese-American and an immigrant living in New York. The correspondence also highlights his relation to a prominent Chinese educator and philosopher, Hu Shih (胡適) and his family. There are also materials related to his father, Hsu Singloh (徐新六), who was a major finance and banking leader during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Also included are immigration and travel documents of T.C. Hsu. Other materials also include news clippings, articles, financial records, printed materials, portraits and photographs, maps and postcards.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Columbia students urged the university to divest from companies doing business in South Africa in protest of South Africa's system of apartheid. After a series of student protests culminating in a month long blockade of Hamilton Hall in 1985, the Trustees voted to begin full divestment. The collection contains the administrative records of this decision making process in the 1970s-1980s.

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 consists of manuscripts by Sekara and printed materials. The manuscripts primarily deal with Sekara's military career during the Civil War. There is a copy of "Sumskie gusary 1651-1951" (Buenos Aires, 1954) to which various clippings and notes have been appended. In addition, there are a few dozen issues of the journals "The Sentinel" and "Voennai︠a︡ byl ́(The Military Past) dating from the 1950s to 1974.

The Theodore Richards Conant Collection documents the life and film making career of Theodore Richards Conant, dating from 1949 to 2010, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1953 to 2000. The focus of the materials is on the Korean War, Korean culture and society. Materials in the collection consist of his personal papers and a substantial amount of audiovisual materials related to the documentary films created and/or collected by him during his career. The personal papers consist of clippings, ephemera, correspondence, scenarios, notes, catalogs, journals and other unique items. The photographs in the collection document Korea's political and cultural aspect, as well as Conant's work in Korea as a film producer while working in the UN Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA). The audiovisual materials are the documentaries directed and filmed by Conant, related to the Korean War, Korean society and culture.

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.

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..

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.