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, programs, and audio and video recordings.

The material in this collection was originally housed in binders in Barney Rosset's New York apartment, and cover his personal and professional endeavors as a radical publisher, intellectual, and overall man of letters. It consists of writings, letters, photographs, interviews, films, catalogs, publishing files related to both Grove Press and Evergreen Review, and extensive biographical information on Rosset. The entire collection has been rehoused into archival quality boxes and folders. Each binder had been labeled, generally with some sort of topical or chronological designation. In most cases the binder labels will be retained as file titles, and the subdivisions within binders have become folders and retained, to a great extent, the titles assigned to them by the creator. In some cases the staff of the RBML altered or elaborated on existing folder titles for general clarity and ease of research. In some cases, the collection contains both original and typed (or transcribed) copies, the latter often taking the form of computer printouts that were originally held in binders marked "Master" or "Master Disk" to indicate their contents were on computer disks. These original binder titles have been kept throughout the finding aid.

The original scores, clippings, correspondence and ephemera in this collection document the lives and careers of Harry Lawrence, Carlotta, and Valdo Freeman, a family of African-American performing artists involved in opera, theatre, and music in early-twentieth-century New York.

The papers comprise correspondence, documents, institutional files, writings, lectures, memoirs, research notes, photographs, third party materials, printed materials, periodicals, microfilms, audio material, and digital files accrued by historian and professor emeritus of Columbia University, Leopold H. Haimson, during his professional life.

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.

This collection documents the professional work of film critic, professor, and author, Amos Vogel. The bulk of the records are concerned with numerous films that Vogel has screened for Cinema 16, the independent film society that he founded and directed for sixteen years, as well as administrative records, correspondence, photographs, and printed material.

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.

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

An artificial collection of phonograph records, reels of audio tape recordings, and motion picture films recording a variety of Columbia University academic and extra-curricular activities and events such as lectures; speeches, some at award ceremonies; commencement; installation of Nicholas M. Butler and Dwight D. Eisenhower as presidents of the university; King George VI of England during his visit, 1939; speech of England's Queen Mother, Elizabeth in 1954; homecoming; football, the band; academic and alumni conferences; and radio programs under the auspices of Columbia. Many of the recordings are of Eisenhower. Other prominent personalities include John Foster Dulles, Herbert Hoover, Isidor Rabi, Eleanor Roosevelt, John R. Dunning, and the Shah of Iran.