I’m relatively new to the scene at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. I was hired just under a year ago as the processing archivist for the Communist Party, USA records, a collection that comprises over 400 linear feet of manuscript material, in addition to several hundred A/V tapes and recordings. I joined a staff of 18: 9 permanent employees, 7 project employees, and 2 part-time employees, all of varying backgrounds and experience. We count 10 archivists among our staff, 1 reference librarian, 3 catalogers, a curator of non-print materials, the assistant director of the Fredric Ewen Academic Freedom Center, a collections assistant, and of course, our director. Like most university libraries, our library greatly benefits from the employment of several student assistants and interns, many of whom are pulled from NYU’s Archives and Public History graduate program. They come to us with a variety of experiences and interests themselves and we do our best to add to their skill set as burgeoning archivists.

The Tamiment Library is a historical goldmine for progressive politics. Labor history, radical politics, civil rights, women’s rights, social history, immigrant history, and the New York working class are all extensively documented in a variety of formats. Our holdings include over 75,000 monographs, tens of thousands of serials and pamphlets, and a vast collection of vertical files which contain almost a million items including broadsides, leaflets, and clippings on individuals, organizations, and relevant subjects. Tamiment also houses over 20,000 linear feet of organizational records and personal papers like the National Organization for Women (New York City chapter), the National Lawyers Guild, the Elizabeth Gurley Flynn papers, and the Guantanamo Detention Center archive. Tamiment is home to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, the Archives of Irish America, and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives which is the repository for the records of the New York City Central Labor Council, its member unions, and affiliated organizations. Our non-print collections consist of over 500,000 photographs, over 2,000 posters, original paintings and drawings, political cartoons, more than 6,000 political buttons, t-shirts, picket signs, banners, bumper stickers and other artifacts. If those collections don’t satisfy your research needs, you may be interested in Tamiment’s documentaries, feature films, or archival film footage. We also have a growing trove of oral histories available, notably “The Oral History of the American Left” and “New Yorkers at Work.” Our library participates in the Web-at-Risk project which aims to capture and preserve websites created by organizations or individuals associated with labor and the Left. We are also home to the Fredric Ewen Academic Freedom Center and the Center for the United States and the Cold War and play host to their myriad of activities, programs, and fellows. The skills and knowledge of Tamiment staff are integral to the ongoing work of the library and, of course, archivists and archival assistants play a huge role in that work. We have several collections in process at the moment and those projects are likely to be discussed here in the coming months. Like the other NYU special collections repositories, we use the Archivist’s Toolkit to manage our collections and create our finding aids and I would imagine that some of our staff has comments to offer about the pros and cons of life with the AT. We have an interesting mix of professionals—those with a long history of archival experience, some newly minted archivists, and those aforementioned students who are currently learning the ropes. I think we are all looking forward to sharing our experiences and interests here, and to hearing from our peers, both at NYU and from the archival world at large. In the meantime, feel free to browse some images from our collections on our Flickr page.
Jillian Cuellar, Processing Archivist
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives