The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML) is Columbia’s principal repository for primary source collections. The range of collections in 
RBML span more than 4,000 years and comprise rare printed works, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablets, papyri, and Coptic ostraca; medieval and renaissance manuscripts; as well as art and realia.
Internship Spring 2011
Alison Lotto: working with the Processing Archivist, Carrie Hintz, to process a number of small collections. So far, they have been 20th century faculty papers, but I will be working on various manuscript collections.
This semester I worked as a processing intern in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Columbia. Two of the collections I worked on were the papers of former Columbia faculty members. These types of papers have a lot of specific issues, and make you think about how you put a person’s life work in an archive without filling the shelves with research and data. The third collection I worked on, the Mike McGrady papers, were on a totally different subject matter, and very entertaining.
In 1969, Lyle Stuart Inc. published a book entitled Naked Came the Stranger. Initially, it was only a moderate success, but after only a few weeks rumors began that the author Penelope Ashe was perhaps not exactly what she seemed. Most reviewers gave it terrible reviews, but the only reviewer who thought there was something unusual about the book was William Trotter at the Charlotte Observer.
By August, the truth behind the book came out. Three journalists at the Long Island newspaper Newsday, including Mike McGrady, decided to see if they could write a book that was as good as the Jacqueline Susann novel that had recently topped the best-seller list. They decided to send a memo to all of the journalists at Newsday proposing that they each write a chapter in the book. The specific instructions were that the chapters should be very poorly written, and needed to have as many dirty scenes as possible. McGrady and Harvey Aronson edited the manuscript and had it published. The novel tells the story of Gillian Blake, who discovers her husband is cheating on her and decides to end all of the marriages in the neighborhood. After many “dirty scenes,” pools, dentists, mobsters and a number of deaths, the Blakes decide to leave the town with all of the marriages in their wake. After the hoax was exposed, the book became a best-seller, was turned into a paperback and was eventually made into a movie.
Processing the collection was really interesting, because it is impossible not to read a collection that is full of ridiculous stories. It was easy to arrange because it is only two boxes, but the description was actually difficult. There have been a number of research requests at Columbia for the collection, so hopefully it will get even more use in the future.
Finding aid for McGrady Collection: :http://clio.cul.columbia.edu:7018/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=867&recCount=50&recPointer=0&bibId=4079066