The New York University Archives has served, since 1977, as the final repository for the historical records of New York University (NYU), in Greenwich Village, New York, U.S. The NYU Archives contains documents, photographs or drawings collected since 1854, including records or notebooks of some notable people. It functions primarily to document the history of the university and to provide source material for administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and other members of the university community. The NYU Archives also accommodates scholars, authors, and other interested persons who seek to evaluate the impact of the university's activities on the history of American social, cultural and intellectual development.
The archives houses official records, papers, and publications of New York University; personal or professional papers of New York University faculty; Special Collections (records and papers which are neither official university records nor faculty papers, but which relate to the history of New York University; and an Archives Reference Collection (vertical subject files, biographical directories, archival manuals and publications, copies of books and publications by faculty members, duplicate yearbooks, repository guides and finding aids and inventories to materials related to New York University that are housed in other repositories). In all, the NYU Archives contains of archive and manuscript materials.
Mission
The core mission of the University Archives is: To appraise, collect, organize, describe, make available, and preserve records of historical, legal, fiscal, and/or administrative value to New York University To provide adequate facilities for the retention and preservation of such records To provide information services that will assist the operation of the university To serve as a resource and laboratory to stimulate and nourish creative teaching and learning To serve research and scholarship by making available and encouraging the use of its collections by members of the university and the community at large To promote knowledge and understanding of the origins, aims, programs, and goals of the university, and of the development of these aims, goals, and programs To implement records management by formulating policy and procedures that will ensure the collection and preservation of archival materials
History
Although August 1977 marked the NYU Archives' designation as the "official repository for all non-current records of the University," its origins date to NYU's Antebellum period. In June 1854, Isaac Ferris, NYU's third president, received a motion from the University Council to collect the publications of alumni for preservation in the library, and “to obtain for deposit in the archives the plates of all the commencements and exhibitions.”
In 1922, NYU Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown commissioned Professor Theodore F. Jones to write a history of the university in commemoration of its centennial celebration in 1932. Dr. Jones assembled the "New York University Collection," which included printed and manuscript material relating to the history of NYU, and placed the collection in the Treasure Room at the Gould Memorial Library on the University Heights Campus (currently the site of Bronx Community College). Jones gathered council minutes, financial records, chancellor's files, official university publications, books, pamphlets, academic bulletins, student/faculty publications and photographs, among numerous other materials, to form the nucleus of the University Archives as it exists today.
In 1967, NYU President James M. Hester established the Office of University Archivist and commissioned Dr. Thomas C. Pollock "to gather material for and write a modern history of the University." According to minutes of the advisory committee on the history of New York University (ACHNYU) meeting from June 14, 1967, "...Pollock had agreed to become Archivist of the University with the responsibility for writing a new history...The Office of the Archivist would be set up and a small staff would work under Dr. Pollock's supervision in collecting data for the history. Up to that time, NYU had assigned the role of managing the university's records – mainly the minutes of the governing council and the academic senate – to the secretary of the university.