Special and Digital Collections Spring 2025 Report

This semester, the Special Collections team at Teachers College, Columbia University has made significant strides in enhancing our collections, expanding digital access, supporting researchers, and engaging with the academic community. Our dedicated efforts have contributed to the preservation, organization, and discoverability of our unique holdings.

1. Archival Processing and Collection Management

A primary focus this semester was the continued reprocessing of the William F. Russell Papers. This comprehensive project involved:

• Assessment and Reorganization: Meticulously assessing each box and folder to align the current organization with William F. Russell's original arrangement and use, thereby improving accessibility. Contents were rearranged to reflect his and his secretaries' organizational structures, ensuring chronological and alphabetical order within folders for better contextualization.
• Archival Description: Detailed notes for archival description were taken, identifying consistent subjects, individuals, and topics across the collection to streamline future finding aid creation.
• Progress and Efficiency: Approximately halfway through reprocessing the physical collection (around 50% of folders and boxes, or about 20 linear feet), we also strategically discarded superfluous sub-folders, reducing the collection's volume by about 10 linear feet without removing any essential materials.
• Time Investment: Approximately 163 hours have been dedicated to this vital project since January.

In addition to the Russell Papers, efforts were made to enrich our Research Guides with new finding aids:

• Faculty and Emeriti Faculty Finding Aids: Descriptions were added for the collections of Allan B. Abbot, Norton L. Beach, Anna M. Cooley, Joan Dye Gussow, and Patty Smith Hill.
• A finding aid for John K. Norton's Papers was also developed, though it is not yet accessible through LibGuides.

Further collection enhancements included:

• Dates of employment for Teachers College Faculty were added from the Teachers College Faculty and Teachers College Emeriti Faculty SubCollections to Alma, enriching biographical data.
• Alma records for 280 books were updated to reflect additions to the Women's Studies Archive: Women and Work, a GALE database.
• Reshelving of Juvenile books was completed to maintain collection order.

1. Digital Collections and Digitization

Significant progress was made in expanding and enhancing our digital collections and access:

1. Digital Ingest and Migrations:

Continued efforts to finish migrating the last of the material from the Pocket Knowledge platform, specifically "Athena Digitization" tagged content. This material, initially unorganized and using uncontrolled vocabularies, required manual file examination. As a result, we added the nearly 800 items to the Adelaide Nutting Historical Nursing Collection . The collection offers a rich source of research materials on the history of nursing. This collection covers the development of nursing worldwide and is of interest not only to nursing students but also to researchers in such fields as the history of medicine, public health, hospital administration, and women's studies. Originally assembled by Adelaide Nutting during her years at Teachers College and continued by her successors, the collection consists of numerous reports, pamphlets, programs, and manuscripts, in addition to published volumes on nursing and medicine. Approximately 100 titles to the Nursing Education Archive, providing researcher’s significant access to the history of nursing education at Teachers College. A small portion of the collection were utilized in the November of 2024 for the blogpost Dear Ms. Nutting .

We formatted and added to the Student Organization Records. Comprised of  Student-Faculty Committee Files (103 objects), Interdepartmental Student Board (209 objects), Senate and Student Affairs (419 objects), and Peace Movement Files from the 1960s and 70s (233 objects), and the full run of Radix (Teachers College Student Senate Newspaper) the collection highlights student voices within the administration at Teachers College.

Furthermore, we made available a run of Maxine Greene photos, 47 new summer announcements from the years 1949-1955,

We also created the Books from TC Monograph Collection (914 objects) highlighting the substantial academic work created by Teachers College faculty throughout the years. As a result of this collection addition, we were able to improved organization and accessibility of Contributions to Education Collection.

Finally, we converted .mov files in two collections: Myers Collection of Video Art which offers a selection of video artworks created or collected by members of the Teachers College community; and The Gottesman Library Film Archive, which contains historical video footage digitized from 8mm and 16mm formats. It is a collection of educational films that relate to Teachers College, with participation and production by its members in the first half of the twentieth century, and added The Carol Cade Children’s Art Collection (532 objects)

1. Digitization Projects:

In addition to ingest and access, the Special and Digital Collections group continued to digitize material relevant to Teachers College:

• Carol Cade Collection: A total of 532 objects, including 353 pieces of children’s art, were scanned.
• TC Class Book, 1914-1915: 69 pages were scanned.
• A Report of an Experiment with Backwards Pupils in Battle Creek, Michigan, by Eva N. Palmer, 1928: 32 pages were scanned.
• Suggestions for Improvements of Secondary Education in Nigeria: 68 pages were scanned.
• Buildings and Grounds for Delaware Public Schools, 1919: 68 pages were scanned.
• Relation of teachers' work in education to that of parents, 1910: 64 pages were scanned.
• Campana de Alfabetizacion de Freire: 218 pages were scanned.
• 1904-1905 Teachers College Announcement: 172 pages were scanned.
• TC Summer Session Materials, 1949-1955: 325 pages were scanned.

1. Research, Outreach, and Engagement

The team actively engaged with researchers and the wider community through various services and initiatives:

1. Research and Access

• 176 special collection tickets were submitted and answered in the Spring of 2025. This is nearly double the total tickets from the Fall of 2024, and brings the total number of tickets for the Fall and Spring Terms to 281
• The tickets included the following requests:
  • 57 General Research Inquiries
  • 39 Digital Access request (30 of which came from researchers outside of Teachers College and our affiliates)
  • 26 Closed Stack requests
  • 22 Information Sessions and Consultation requests
    • 3 were multi-hour long primary source sessions
    • 19 were individual hour-long information sessions
  • 11 Donation inquiries
  • 11 Scanning requests
  • 7 Miscellaneous
  • 3 Permission Requests

1. Professional Development & Collaboration:

• Attended the NYC archivists-roundtable webinar on RISD special collections.
• Joined the Special Collections Learning Circle at CUL.
• Submitted a presentation proposal to Digital Libraries Federation symposium, titled Reinstating the Archive: A Case Study in Web 2.0 Platform Migration and Postdigital Reckoning in Special Collections.
• Began preparing for a couple of instructional sessions for the upcoming semester.
• Joined the Ivy League + consortium on Inclusive Language in Cataloging Special Collections Affinity Group

1. Curation and Communication:

• Authored and contributed blog posts on Mabel Carney's legacy at Teachers College, Joan Dye Gussow’s collection, as well as examining the curation of historical objects in What We Put Behind the Glass.
• Contributed to the curation of two exhibits for the curiosity cabinets.
• Began work on a blog post related to TC faculty and travel in support of the upcoming summer exhibition.
• Submitted paper on What’s Happening Collection to American Printing History Association and was accepted for September publication

1. Grants and Special Projects

• Grant Review and Grant Follow-Up were key activities this semester. The team completed a grant submission for archival projects funded by the National Historical Publication and Records Commission. If successful, this grant would enable Gottesman Libraries to digitize and catalog 991 ¼” reels of historical audio. These reels contain invaluable speeches, lectures, teaching materials, conferences, and interviews featuring notable faculty, administrators, and education professionals from the early 20th century. The award of this grant would not only provide researchers access to a trove of previously unheard material but also ensure the continued preservation of these at-risk media.
• Conducted an assessment and quote from on a digitization project for James Earl Russell Papers in the hopes of facilitating a large digitization project.

This semester has seen significant progress in enhancing our collections, improving accessibility, and engaging with our diverse user base. The team remains committed to preserving and providing access to the rich history of education housed within the Special Collections at Teachers College.

In the coming months, in preparation for the new academic year, the Special and Digital Collections team will continue to refine collections, create and elaborate on new cataloging workflows for the ingest of new monograph collections, and put complete the working copy of the Special Collections Development Policy.