The Amiri Baraka Papers contains correspondence, writings, and the personal, political activism and teaching materials related to Amiri Baraka's career as a poet, writer, editor, activist, and teacher in the New York City Beat, Downtown, and Black Arts literary scenes from the 1960s through the 2000s. Included are manuscripts from Baraka's numerous books of poetry, non-fiction, fiction, plays, editorial work, and screenplays. The collection also features organizational and documentary materials relating to Baraka's university teaching and Newark, NJ-based Black radical activism, as well as audio/visual material, photographs, and printed material collected and created by Baraka.

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.

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.

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 Bob Fass Recordings and Papers contains materials created by Bob Fass, host of the late-night program Radio Unnameable on New York City's WBAI radio station. The collection primarily consists of audio recordings of Radio Unnameable and other radio programs hosted by Bob Fass between 1963 and 2011. A small number of video recordings, photographs, correspondence, printed ephemera, and motion picture films are also included in the collection.

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.

These papers contain correspondence; drafts, manuscripts and notes; transcripts of lectures and interviews; printed material; photographs; and audio and video tapes related to life and work of C. L. R. (Cyril Lionel Robert) James--a West Indian athlete, scholar, teacher, writer and political activist.

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.

David A. Hamburg Papers (1950 - 2004, 841 boxes) document life and work of David A. Hamburg, a scholar, public health expert and president of Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1982 to 1997, who helped improve the quality of life and education for young people and worked to prevent violent conflict among nations