THE QUEENS COLLEGE ARCHIVES
The Queens College Archives, part of the Benjamin Rosenthal College Library, comprises 1,400 cubic feet of primarily college records from 1937 to the present. Collecting began formally in the late 1960's, supplementing earlier efforts to preserve largely unorganized records.
The Archives Office is located in Room 227 in Rosenthal Library. The Archives is open to all researchers by appointment only. Contact Archivist Stephen Barto at 718-997-3650.
College Records
College records represent all aspects of college and activities and operations undertaken by and involving the student body, faculty, staff and higher administration. The largest concentrations of records are in areas involving administrative activities, particularly at the presidential, vice presidential, and dean level and Offices below, and the departmental level. Records from the Presidents and various Deans, including the Dean of Faculty, the Provosts, and other high administrative positions are the single largest body of records in the Archives, dating from 1937 to the mid 1990's. Examples follow:
- The largest body of records from any other administrative office is from Alumni Affairs, and the Library itself. The Archives also holds a substantial body of departmental records from the Social Sciences Division and lesser bodies from some of the Humanities and Science departments. There is also a significant collection from the Office of News and Information services and the Office of Special Events. There are records of the major governing bodies of the College, the Academic Senate and its predecessors, from the late 1930's to the 1990's.
- The Archives has substantial information on individual faculty members among the higher level administrative records, particularly in personnel records of faculty members who served prior to 1980. There is a minor holding of individual faculty papers of about 20 collections. There are somewhat fragmentary records of student government and from student activities Offices, and a few fraternities, spanning the 1930's to the 1990's.
- The Archives holds a wide variety of publications and other printed items, within and apart from the original correspondence, memoranda, notes, plans and reports that comprise the aforementioned groups of records. These include faculty and student publications, college-wide level administrative reports and reviews and CUNY level publications of studies and reports and minutes of its governing bodies and many different types of brochures, posters and similar printed materials concerning academics and campus life.
- Among the most important publications held are:
- A nearly complete set of course bulletins (catalogs) and a near complete set of the Silhouette, the college yearbook. Complete sets of these, for general reference, are held by the College Reserve Library.
- Faculty/staff newsletters and newspapers. The majority of student newspapers, from the first newspaper the Crown to the recent Quad and the current Knight News are available on microfilm in the Library Media Center. The Archives has original copies of most of these and a few specialized newspapers not microfilmed.
- The Archives contains non-print media material; several thousand photographs and transparencies (slides) and several hundred video and audio tapes.
Private Papers
In addition to College records, the Archives has collected private papers, or manuscript collections. The five principal collections, most of which are not related directly to activities at the College, or not generated by faculty, staff or alumni are:
- Queens NYS State Assemblyman and Speaker Saul Weprin (1927-1994), Assembly Papers.
- Queens Congressman Benjamin N Rosenthal (1923-1983), Congressional Papers.
- Karol Rathaus (1895–1954), Personal Papers. Rathaus was a classical music composer, Professor of Music at Queens College and pre WWII European émigré.
- Robert Schwarz (1956–1999), Personal Papers. Schwarz was a classical music journalist and writer and Queens College alumni.
- Judge Charles S. Colden (1885–1960), Personal Papers. Colden was a local public official and the College's most important co-founder. There are also Colden Papers at the main Queensboro Public Library in Jamaica.
Artifacts & Memorabilia
The Archives holds some artifacts and memorabilia relating to campus life, including flags and banners, clothing, medals, plaques and other commemorative items, and, along with photographs, scrapbooks and printed materials, such as brochures and flyers, actively seeks such material, particularly from alumni.
The archives will consider donations of the personal papers of alumni and non-alumni, as well as any records relating directly to Queens College.
The Digital Metro New York Grant Project
The Digital Metro New York Grant Project, a collaboration between Rosenthal Library and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Queens College, began in the spring of 2005 and was completed in early 2006. Its objectives were to explore the growing field of digitization and to make available online information on the history of the College, drawn from a representative sampling from the College Archives that would show the integral place of the College in the Borough of Queens and New York City communities.
Students in GSLIS were introduced to Content DM data management software, SilverFast Scanning Software, Adobe Photoshop, and optical character recognition (OCR) software, which they then used to complete the GSLIS portion of the project. The Library and Archives provided archival material in different formats for digitization and also expertise in the preparation and organization of information. Cataloging utilized metadata (data on data) for the technical and intellectual description of the electronic images created. The Library and Archives then also engaged in the work of digitization.
The archival materials scanned, cataloged, and uploaded to the website of the funding organization, Metro, were drawn from:
- Typescript correspondence in the College Presidential records,
- The People's College on the Hill, a book of essays and photographs published by the College on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 1987,
- Part of the College's first yearbook, the 1941 Silhouette, containing historical reminiscences from the period and photographs of the campus and college community,
- Student magazine covers,
- Flyers for student events, and
- Archival transparencies and photographs.
In addition, images were digitized from two of the largest non-institutional collections in the Archives, New York State Assembly Speaker Saul Weprin Papers and Congressman Benjamin Rosenthal Papers. The project also produced instructional documentation for the software that was employed.
For more information contact:
Mr. Steve Barto
Adjunct Archivist
