Introduction

The Archives of the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center consists of reports, correspondence, pamphlets, books, periodicals, other publications, photographs, video and audio tapes or discs, and other materials documenting or otherwise related to its history and operations. They were gathered over the past 15 years or so, mainly from sources within the Graduate Center; but some documents came from the CUNY Administration and, via correspondence and copying, from some of CUNY’s component colleges. They have been organized into a coherent searchable collection, open to CUNY administrators, faculty and other staff members, students, and authorized outsiders, and are housed in a separate section of the Mina Rees Library’s Special Collections room, C-196.04, on the Concourse level.

Arrangement

The collection is organized in ten record groups, as listed below. Documents from the Provost’s Office have been transferred to the Archives only recently, in small batches, and have been found mostly to complement – and often duplicate – those already in the Presidents’ Files; hence no separate “Provost’s Office” record group could be established. As of September 2010 the following record groups had been established and processed and are available for consultation:

Users can browse the following record groups:

1. A Basic Subject File (“Subjects”)
2. Centers and Institutes
3. Periodicals
4. Committee Records
5. President’s Files – Introduction
   1. Presidents’ Files — Rees
   2. Presidents’ Files — Proshansky
   3. Presidents’ Files — Horowitz
6. Vice President for Finance and Administration
7. CUNY
8. Doctoral Students Council (DSC)

Newly received materials will be integrated into these record groups or processed as new, additional record groups as appropriate when they become available to the Archives.

The record groups are shelved in this order. Within each record group material is placed in archival folders, which are stored in archival boxes. The folders bear titles describing their contents, and the boxes are labeled with the titles of the folders they contain. The boxes as well as the folders within them are usually in alphabetical order. Material within each folder is usually filed in reverse chronological order, i.e., with the latest item in front. As a rule only one copy of each item has been retained – usually the most nearly complete and best preserved. Bound books and oversized materials are shelved, to the extent possible, adjacent to the boxes of the record group to which they pertain. Subject titles of folders are usually in the natural word order (not inverted) (e.g., Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations, not Bunche, Ralph, Institute…).

There are separate guides for each record group, and there is a separate introduction (V) to the Presidents’ Files. The guides are available on the Library’s website at:

http://library.gc.cuny.edu/about-the-library/collections/our-collections/archives-2/

They list the titles of all folders in the group, generally along with summaries of their contents, explanatory notes, and cross-references, all designed to facilitate the retrieval of desired information. The summaries are often so detailed that consultation of the source documents becomes unnecessary.

There is considerable overlapping among the groups: topics treated by a given committee may appear in other documents in the “Subjects” group or again in a president’s papers. While cross-references are used extensively within a given record group they are very rarely employed to lead from one record group to another.

Using the Archives

Users wishing to access material in the Archives should first visit the Archives website, as described above, and consult the guides to one or more record groups they select. The selected guide may be browsed, or pages containing a desired topic may be retrieved by using the “find” feature (control + f) provided by the software. (Unfortunately this works only with one record group at a time.)

Access to the documents in the Archives must be arranged in advance. (Students and outsiders must obtain permission of the Chief Librarian.) Prospective users should telephone the archivist, Dr. John Rothman, at 212-817-7076, for an appointment. Dr. Rothman is at the Graduate Center usually on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 9:15 am to 4:15 pm. Because the materials in the Archives are unique and many are quite fragile, access is permitted only under the following procedures:

1. The Archivist will retrieve requested materials from the shelves (no more than one box at a time) and will provide folders from a box to the user, for his/her perusal, one at a time. Users may not enter the stacks to remove materials.
2. The Archivist must be present while a user is working with the files, and will return folders to the box and the box to the stacks when the user is finished.
3. Users must handle papers with care and make sure that they are returned to the folder in the original order.
4. Notes may be taken in pencil only. Ink and colored markers are prohibited.
5. The Archivist will be available for consultation with the user and will accept requests for photocopies of a reasonable number of pages. There are no facilities for self-service photocopying.

Copyright

If a user wishes to quote an entire document or a portion of a document that exceeds fair use limitations, permission to do so must be obtained in advance by a written request to the Archivist. If the document is copyrighted, clearance must be obtained from the copyright holder. In any event, credit must be given to the GSUC Archives by some phrase of acknowledgment such as “Courtesy of the Graduate School and University Center Archives.”

(revised and updated as of March 16, 2011)