Archives

Located in room 19 of Lehman Hall, the Barnard College Archives was founded in 1963 as the permanent repository for the records of the College. The Archives is a unit of Barnard Library and Academic Information Services (BLAIS).

Highlights of the holdings include the 1883 Memorial to the Columbia College Board of Trustees to admit women, the original charters and statutes of Barnard College, and correspondence surrounding the founding and formation of the College; scrapbooks donated by alumnae; administrative and student publications; administrative and departmental records; visual materials such as photographic prints and negatives, motion picture film, and videos; papers of alumnae and faculty; architectural drawings, posters, and prints; an audio collection including speeches, lectures, and radio programs dating from the 1930s to the present; and records of the Barnard College Undergraduate Association, recording the activities of the student government.

The Special Collections include Kenneth Heyman's photographs of alumna Margaret Mead, class of 1923; a substantial portion of the records of the American Woman's Association, an independent national organization, and the Overbury Collection, which consists primarily of first-edition literary works and letters by American women from the early Colonial days through the 1950s.  The Barnard Rare Book Collection is a 477-volume collection of rare books and manuscripts that was placed on deposit at Columbia in the summer of 2010 and is presently housed in the Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The collection ranges from classical texts printed during the Renaissance to 21st-century artists’ books.

To conduct research or for further information, please send an email to archives@barnard.edu.