Special Collections and Archives
For instructions on how to schedule an appointment to access NYU Special Collections, visit our Access to Special Collections page.
What’s in NYU Special Collections?
The NYU Special Collections Center co-locates services for all our special collections, including:
- Fales Library and Special Collections
- Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
- New York University Archives
Fales Library and Special Collections
The Fales Library and Special Collections comprises over 350,000 volumes of books and other printed materials; more than 11,000 linear feet of archives, and over 100,000 individual and unique media elements.
Fales materials complement the collection policies of the Libraries by supplying rare or fine editions of texts and original copies of media, or by prospectively collecting in areas of historical and cultural interest.
Fales Library of British and American Literature
The Fales Library of English and American Literature documents the history of the novel in English, broadly representing developments in narrative and genre prose fiction from 1700 to the present.
The Downtown Collection
The Downtown Collection, founded in 1994, comprises hundreds of archives, printed materials, and media documenting the downtown arts scenes that evolved in SoHo, the East Village, and the Lower East Side from the 1960s through to the present, with a particular focus on the period from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s.
Marion Nestle Food Studies Collection
The Marion Nestle Food Studies Collection documents the evolution of world cuisines and food practices with a particular focus on the United States and the food habits and activity in New York City, and includes a significant collection of historical and contemporary cookbooks, as well as archival collections.
The Riot Grrrl Collection
The Riot Grrrl Collection documents the evolution of the feminist, punk youth movement Riot Grrrl in the 1990s, as well as adjacent queer and feminist activism and performance emerging from or inspired by Riot Grrrl.
Special Collections
Serving as the Special Collection for the arts and humanities at NYU, the general special collections has a broad historical range, from cuneiform tablets to modern manuscripts, and covers a wide range of material formats, languages, and subjects.
New York University Archives
The University Archives serve as the final repository for the historical records of NYU. Its primary purpose is to document the history of the University and to provide source material for administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and other members of the University community, as well as 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.
University Records
University records encompass materials of any format that are generated or received by the various administrative offices of New York University in the conduct of their business from the founding of the University in 1831 to the present.
Manuscript Collections
The Manuscript Collections document the internal life and culture of the University community. They include personal and professional papers of New York University faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The manuscript collections also document the history of the Washington Square area and the University’s evolving relationship with the community.
The Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
The Tamiment/Wagner Collections include materials on the history of labor, radicalism, and progressive social movements.
Political Radicalism
Tamiment holds the official archives of the Communist Party, USA, and the Daily Worker newspaper, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the Socialist Party, and the Democratic Socialist of America, as well as the papers of Eugene Debs, James and Esther Jackson, Michael Harrington, and Howard Zinn.
Labor
Tamiment is the official repository of New York City’s Central Labor Council and holds the archives of many of its unions, including UAW District 65, the United Federation of Teachers, and AFSCME District Council 37.
Cold War
Tamiment holds many collections relating to the Cold War and its effect on U.S. society. These holdings include the papers of the Nation magazine, Phillip Agee, Howard Zinn, Alger Hiss, and the film archive of Estela and Ernesto Bravo.
Archives of Irish America
The Archives of Irish America documents the Irish Diaspora in the United States, its relationship to the American labor movement, to New York City history, and to American culture and society in general. The collection includes the Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Collection, one of the largest collections in the U.S. for the study of Irish-American music and popular culture.