First Step: Donor Inquiry
After receiving an email or phone call, the archivist will reach out via phone or email to setup a preliminary meeting to go over the archival accession process and and go over what archival items (photographs, correspondence, personal papers) will be earmarked for donation to BCC’s Archives.
What to Donate
If you are interested in donating organizational records or personal papers to BCC, please contact the Archivist, Cynthia Tobar. We will work with donors of appropriate material to identify specifically what should be preserved. Lists of types of material that are often important are listed below. Please note that these lists are suggestive rather than mandatory.
Records of Organizations:
Administrative Records
Constitution/bylaws, reports (annual and planning), correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, agendas, and attachments (for annual and committee meetings), publications (newsletters, brochures, etc.), annual budgets, financial statements and audit reports, job descriptions, newspaper clippings about the organization, organizational charts and historical summaries, policy and procedure manuals, press releases and public relations material, fund-raising materials.
Program Records
Audio visual materials (photographs, video and audio tapes), planning documents, program evaluations, project reports, training manuals.
Records of Individuals:
Letters, diaries, speeches, scrapbooks, autobiographical sketches, photographs, films, audio and video tapes, and professional files.
The Donation Process
Because the research value of historical materials may be diminished if items are removed or rearranged, donors are encouraged to contact the Archives before discarding or rearranging materials. The Archivist will work with the donor to identify historically significant materials and prepare them for transfer to the Archives. Before the physical transfer of materials can occur, legal title to the materials needs to be transferred from the donor to BCC. This begins with a letter of intent. For further information on the donation process, see: A Guide to Donating Your Personal or Family Papers to a Repository.
Collections are housed in an area with strict environmental controls to enhance preservation of historical materials. Strict security measures are also in place to safeguard the collections.
Collections donated to the Archives are organized and described by professional archivists and pre-professional graduate students to provide researchers with easy access to the materials. The resulting finding aid or guide to the collection will be posted on the Archives website, making it available to anyone with Internet access. Researchers (e.g. students, teachers, professors, historians, journalists) use these guides to identify material that will be useful to them in their work.
The BCC Archives and Special Collections is devoted to collecting, preserving and providing access to resources documenting the history and culture of Bronx Community College. These primary source materials are used by community members, students, faculty, scholars, journalists, and others from across the world to tell stories that might otherwise go untold.
Office or administrative records of the College that are deemed to have historical value are transferred to the Archives. The determination of archival value is based on the Archives Collection Development Policy.
Please email the Archivist, Cynthia Tobar if you have any questions about donations to the archives.