Located in Butler Library, the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is Columbia's principal repository for rare and unique materials, with holdings that span four thousand years of recorded knowledge, from cuneiform tablets to early printed books and born-digital archives. Each year RBML welcomes thousands of researchers and visitors to their reading room, exhibitions, programs, and classrooms.
This collection contains the records of the Research in Contemporary Cultures project (1947-1953) begun by Ruth Benedict at Columbia University, and carried out by Margaret Mead at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History after Benedict's death in 1948. The records of three successor projects, Studies in Soviet Culture (1948-1952), Studies in Contemporary Culture (1951-1952), and and Study Program of Human Health and the Ecology of Man (1954-1956) are also included. The purpose of these projects was anthropological study at a distance of global cultures inaccessible for direct observation, in an attempt to establish the "national character" of countries of geopolitical interest to the United States government.
The most substantial part of the collection is the extensive correspondence between Nien Cheng and June Rose Garrott (originals have been scanned onto discs). There are letters; WWW print-outs; email print-outs; artwork; audio cassettes; VHS tapes; DVDs; CDs; photographs; a scroll; a fan; printed ephemera; books; and a bust of Lao She.
The Chiu Chung-wei correspondence consists of outgoing and incoming letters and telegrams from and to Chiu when he was the Secretary of the President serving under the Acting President, Li Zongren, from 1949 to 1950. Other materials also include newspaper clippings and memoranda.
Three typescripts by Galia Bodde: "Memories: My childhood and Youth in Russia, Siberia and Manchuria, 1900-1925" (1986); "A Russian Family in China under the Japanese: Letters from Peking by N. A. Speshnev, His Wife and Son, June 28, 1937-November 14, 1941" (1989); and "The Speshnevs Again in Russia: 90 Letters from Antonina Alexeyevna Speshneva, December 5, 1947-May 17, 1958" (1992).