Book collecting emphasizes the current teaching and research needs of the Columbia campus and builds on collection strengths in eighteenth-century belles lettres, the novel, fine press and artist books, and twentieth-century small press production. Other strengths include “obscene” or erotic literature, poetry between the World Wars, the European realist novel, the Beats, African-American literature of the twentieth century, and contemporary poetry.  An effort is made to collect contemporary trade publishing that has significant artifactual value, such as a strong graphic or typographic element, unusual format, or intermedia component. Please see also our collecting statement on the performing arts.

Single-creator archival collections are not a strength of the RBML but exceptions are made for authors who are Columbia or Barnard alumni or faculty or whose careers touch another strength of the collection, such as those authors who are also publishers, who work in human rights, or who treat human sexuality. We hold the papers of William Bronk, Hart Crane, Stephen Crane and partial archives of several Beat authors, such as Jack Kerouac, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, and Hettie Jones. The collection also includes the papers of important literary critics such as Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling, and Edward Said, and we will continue to collect the work of important literary critics and theorists, especially those based on campus or locally.

RBML houses one of the country's premier collections of publishers' archives, including the archives of publishing companies, literary journals, literary agencies, and other organizations, as well as the papers of editors, publishers, and literary agents. Because New York City is the center of the nation's publishing industry, we have focused on the local scene but have expanded beyond where relevant or opportune. We have also sought to collect the papers of a range of organizations, from the papers of Big Six publishers to those of not-for-profit small presses and poetry collectives to capture the range of business models and the diversity of the industry.