Award-winning composer, arranger and orchestrator Sid Ramin died this week at age 100. He was best known for his work as orchestrator for several prominent Broadway productions, including West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). He also composed and arranged scores for films and […]
How to tame an opossum…and other childhood preoccupations through the Barnard children’s letters
Processing collections according to updated archival standards gives RBML archivists the opportunity to discover anew our collections. In this post, Processing Archivist Celeste Brewer offers us insights into the practice of children writing letters during the Civil War-era. Historians typically foreground the writings and papers of “Great Men,” but as Celeste notes, paying attention to […]
The Oral History Archives announces a new book series
The Oral History Archives at Columbia and the Columbia Center for Oral History Research are joining forces with Columbia University Press, the Columbia Center for Oral History and the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics to produce a new series of books on oral history methodology and practice. […]
A Tainted Gift: Why would an avowed fascist donate a letter from a Founding Father to Columbia?
In 1927, an Italian medievalist and prominent Fascist named Piero Misciattelli gifted to the Columbia University Libraries an autograph letter written by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in 1821. Jefferson’s letter to Parisian booksellers DeBures Frères placing an order for his burgeoning library was, according to an extract from the Columbia Trustee Minutes of October 3, […]
Researcher Profile | Janelle Drone
We see you every day, handing you a lockers key as you walk in each morning, and receiving it back toward the end of the day. Most often you’re hunkered down over a particular archive, getting to understand a portion of one of our archives better than anyone who works in the RBML. We await […]