From The Collections
Campaign sparks gifts to collections
Example from the library's Nach Waxman Collection of Food and Culinary Trade Cards. From The Collections images where provded by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
What will future generations want to study? Curators at Cornell University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections are constantly considering this as they build collections not only of traditional materials like rare first editions of important books, but multimedia artifacts of the diverse, countercultural and popular phenomena that shape our world.
These new collections – a sampling of those donated during the latest campaign – reflect that goal.
Example from the library's collection on the Velvet Underground. See larger image
• The Velvet Underground: Including rare photographs, unreleased recordings, underground fanzines, posters and handwritten set lists by band members, this is the largest collection held by an institution about one of the most influential rock bands of all time.
Example from Cornell University Library's Honey Lee Cottrell collection. See larger image
• The Nach Waxman Collection of Food and Culinary Trade Cards: Waxman '58, founding partner of the celebrated Manhattan bookstore Kitchen Arts and Letters, spent decades collecting these cards, used to advertise a broad range of items and eagerly snapped up by consumers at a time when mass color printing was new. Today, these cards provide a rich history of Victorian-era trends in food, commerce and agriculture.
Example from the Library's African-American Spoken Word collection. See larger image
• Honey Lee Cottrell: The personal archive of a trailblazing feminist photographer, now part of the Human Sexuality Collection, includes photos of the world of 1970s and '80s Bay Area sex radicals, self-portraits and vision statements for feminist publications, aiding our understanding of the evolution of gay rights and sexual identity.
Example from the library's Wild Style collection. See larger image
• African-American Spoken Word: About 100 vinyl, non-music records of African-Americans range from comedians to spoken-word poets to the speeches of civil rights activists, including Angela Davis, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. These rare recordings, adding depth to collections documenting 20th-century African-American arts and letters, were donated by Mike Sniper in honor of his son, George Alister Snodgrass IV.
• Wild Style: A collection of original artwork associated with Charlie Ahearn's iconic 1982 feature film "Wild Style," one of the earliest introductions of hip-hop to a mass audience, was made for the film by the artist Zephyr. It complements the library's efforts to comprehensively document the origin and spread of hip-hop culture.