Papers include Kagan's correspondence, photographs, printed materials and audio tapes. All letters in the collection date from 1938-39, when he had moved his Petropolis operations to Brussels; there are items by Vladislav Khodasevich, Vladimir Nabokov, and Mikhail Osorgin, and others. Among the photographs are pictures of Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Fedin, and Evgeniĭ Zami︠a︡tin. Printed materials consist chiefly of books published by his firms; some of the books are inscribed, for example by Nikolaĭ Berdi︠a︡ev and Lev Karsavin. Included is a lengthy taped interview of Kagan by Marc Raeff in which Kagan discuses his life and publishing activities.

This collection encompasses the professional and personal life of psychologist and pioneer of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Albert Ellis.

The papers consist of correspondence, diaries, journals, interviews, manuscripts, transcripts, and printed material.

The Alice M. Ditson Fund was established at Columbia University in 1940 and is still active in its primary function of providing financial support to composers, performances, and recordings of contemporary American music. The fund also gives out the annual Ditson Conductor's Award, established in 1945, which honors conductors who have a distinguished record of championing American music. The collection includes files regarding the selection of this prize across several decades, as well as financial records, meeting minutes, applicant files, and subject files for the general Fund since its creation.

Papers of Allen Ginsberg, American poet and one of the founders of the beat generation. The collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, and publications created by Ginsberg and his associates. Note that the main body of Ginsberg's papers is found at Stanford University.

Papers of the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China consist of correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes, committee files, membership records, financial records, fund raising records, motion pictures, audio tapes, phonograph records, photographs, posters, publications of ABMAC and other printed materials. Also included are the files of related Chinese relief organizations: Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, 1954-1969; American Emergency Relief, 1941-1946; United Services to China, 1941-1977. Of particular interest are approximately 6,000 photographs of Chinese medical colleges, hospitals, laboratories and personnel and 45 phonograph records including speeches by such ABMAC supporters as Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek, Pearl S. Buck, Wendell Willkie, Fiorello LaGuardia and a number of movie stars

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.

Magnetic sound tapes of interviews with Angelika Balabanoff. The tapes were made in 1958, apparently for Radio Liberty. They are labeled as follows: "Korolestvo lzhi" (two reels); "Ob internatsionale" (two reels); "O Lenine" (three reels); "O Mussolini i Zinov'eve" (two reels); "O Staline" (two reels); "Serrati, Reed" (two reels).

The Animal Advocates Oral History Collection contains fourteen interviews conducted between 1999 and 2004 with individuals who were involved in different areas of the movement to protect animals. The project sought to examine the genesis and development of ethical frameworks regarding the treatment of animals, the trajectories of different collective actions, how the movements of the 1970s and 1980s continued or differed from earlier movements for the treatment of animals, and the role that individuals played in shaping the movement. Aspects of animal protection discussed in the interviews include animal shelters, opposition to vivisection and scientific testing on animals, treatment of agricultural animals, and environmentalism. Common themes addressed include connections between violence towards animals and violence towards humans, connections with other social justice movements, vegetarianism and veganism, interactions between different organizations, and the religious and ethical backgrounds of narrators.