The Archives staff is thrilled to announce that the newly re-processed Board of Trustees Records are now open for research. The Board of Trustees Records (BC01.01) document the history, activities, discussions, membership, and institutional relationships of the Board from Barnard’s founding through 2023. These materials include meeting minutes and agendas, committee reports, bylaws, institutional agreements with Columbia University, financial records, investment portfolios, trustee profiles, and correspondence that reflect the range and scope of the Board’s history, functions, priorities, and decision-making power.
The minutes and reports generated from Board meetings are particularly illustrative of the Board’s priorities and strategies for specific aspects of governing the College, and their responses to critical moments in Barnard’s history such as student protests against racism and U.S. militarism during the 1960s-70s, labor strikes and union negotiations from the 1970s to the present, divestment from South African apartheid and fossil fuels in the 1990s-2010s, and admission of transgender students in the 2010s.
The new Board of Trustees Records are the result of the Archives staff’s decision to merge several smaller Board collections with overlapping scopes and duplicative materials. Archives Graduate Fellows Maia Hirschler and Katelyn Landry conducted a detailed survey of all materials in eight former Board collections, removed a large amount of duplicate materials, and then combined the materials into a new arrangement. By surveying and processing the Board records at such a granular level, they were able to write detailed descriptions for individual folders of materials. More detailed descriptions will better support keyword searches for particular terms and years, thus better equipping researchers to request relevant materials. Email archives@barnard.edu to ask us about the Board records or to set up an appointment!