The digital collections found here have all been created at Bard, and several of these collections - the Hannah Arendt Collection, the Blücher Archive, and the Student Newspaper Archive - are hosted at Bard as well. Other collections are hosted by Hudson River Valley Heritage, a collaborative digital initiative among cultural heritage institutions in the counties of Columbia, Greene, Dutchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Rockland, Orange, and Putnam counties. HRVH is a hosting platform for participating institutions to contribute and display their scanned photographs, manuscripts, and other historical documents through a digital asset management system called CONTENTdm®.

Peter Aaron Collection - This collection represents selected photographs of students and campus life at Bard taken by photographer Peter Aaron, '68 between the years 1964-1971. The original photographs were loaned to the archives by Mr. Aaron, scanned by Bard Archives staff, and subsequently returned to him. Included here are two aerial shots, some posed portraits, and a variety of candid images of students hanging out and having fun. Dark glasses and sideburns notwithstanding, together they offer a snapshot of Bard in the 1960s that, in many instances, might have been taken yesterday.

Elie Shneour Collection - The Elie A. Shneour Collection is comprised of black and white images scanned directly from negatives found in the Bard Archives. Taken by Elie Shneour ‘47 during the years 1943-1948, the collection offers a snapshot of Bard during and immediately after WWII. Included are some of the first images of women at Bard, as the college became coed in 1944 causing it to break its ties with Columbia University. Other items of interest include aerial shots of the campus, theatrical and musical events, dance parties, conferences, and portraits of individuals who made Bard such a vibrant community.

Bard Student Fire Department Collection - The photographs in this collection document the existence of a student-run volunteer fire department at Bard College. Initially organized in 1942, the Bard College Fire Brigade (later called simply the Bard College Fire Department) became a central campus organization when founder George Blackstone returned from military service in 1946. Intended to protect the Bard community and to provide student members with fire fighting skills, the company fought fires as far away as Rhinecliff and Clermont during its active years. As years passed, however, leadership faltered. Suffering from lack of funds and dwindling membership, President Kline closed the department on May 3, 1960.

WXBC Collection - WXBC was envisioned in 1946 by Elie Shneour '47, and implemented by many hands, including those of John Gillin '47 who wrote his senior project about the technical design and construction of this college radio station. The "X' in its call letters stood for "Experimental," and the 1951 yearbook described the station as the "Voice of the Bard Campus." The photographs in this collection record some of the events of WXBC in its early years.

Bard Family Papers - The letters, deeds, and other objects included here represent a small sample from a collection of Bard family materials donated to the college in 1938-39 by J.A. Sands, a Bard descendant. These selections, with dates ranging from the mid 18th through the mid 20th centuries, animate our understanding of individual family members, their relationships to each other and to the larger society.

To read transcripts of the manuscript material make sure "Page and Text" is displayed in the box on the left and click on the GO button adjacent to this box. From here you can access subsequent pages with transcripts by clicking "next" in the top right hand corner.

Poetry at Bard - a collection established with funds provided by the Carter A. Towbin Poetry Fund in 1982 and containing recordings that represent Bard as an exuberant place for poetry and free thought for more than half a century. Current audio selections include Ted Berrigan, Timothy Leary, Theodore Weiss and Paul Blackburn.

Harvey Fite Collection - Harvey Fite was a student at St. Stephen's College until 1930. He returned as a professor, teaching classes in drama and sculpture at Bard College from 1934-1969. Many of the photos included here were given to Bard by his family in 1996 at the presentation of the self portrait sculpture which stands in the Kellogg Library. Harvey Fite was a vital force in the Bard community, and he helped to shape the college even while he worked to create the monumental landscape work which became Opus 40.

Paul Hartzell Album - This photograph album was assembled by Paul Hartzell, class of 1915. It contains images of individual students, sports teams, fraternities, faculty, buildings, commencement exercises, budding romance, and various college rituals such as the Freshman Tug of War . Taken together, these provide a sense of life at St. Stephens during the years 1913-1915. Images in this collection can be enlarged several times to view details.

Bard College Architecture, Past and Present Collection - This collection contains photographs related to all buildings of Bard College, past and present.

Bard-Tivoli History Collection - This collection contains photographs, letters, and other manuscript material pertaining primarily to the relationship between John and Margaret Bard and Reverend James Starr Clark. These illustrate the beginnings of St. Stephen's College in Annandale; and in Tivoli, Trinity Church and School, and Trinity Academy.

Ward Manor Collection - In 1926 William Ward of the Ward Baking Company funded the renovation of the river estate known as Almonte for purposes of creating a home for the elderly in the 'gray manor house', to be managed and run by his friend William Matthews. Soon, Matthews extended the operation to include summer camps for girls and boys, and summer bungalow rentals to poor families in some 56 buildings extending from Cruger's Island, through what is now Tivoli Bays, to the "Homestead" mansion at the southern edge of the village of Tivoli. This photograph collection, owned by William Matthews' grandaughter Donna Matthews, documents these activities and the lives that were led here for more than 30 years. Very few of these buildings are standing today.

Tivoli Collection - The Tivoli Collection is comprised of selected photographs of Tivoli collected by the late Joan Navins, former Village Historian.

Bard College Student Newspaper Archive - launched in 2000 by two former Bard students, this site provides access to over 10,000 pages of student newspapers, spanning more than 100 years of Bard’s history. As the creators of the site note in their introduction: “Nowhere does one find a more intimate, personal account of Bard's cultural history than in the expressive output of the students themselves.”

The Hannah Arendt Collection - This site presents images and analysis of marginalia contained in selected titles from Hannah Arendt's personal library, given to Bard after her death in 1975. It also features audio segments from “Thinking in Dark Times,” a conference held at Bard in October of 2006 that re-examined her scholarship and commemorated the 100th anniversary of her birth.

Blücher Archive - reintroduces the ideas and influence of Heinrich Blücher to the Bard community and beyond. This site features transcripts of lectures delivered in the 1950s and 1960s on the history of philosophy. These lectures embodied his ideas surrounding the Common Course, which evolved into the present First Year Seminar.

Arendtiana Collection - The Arendtiana Collection is intended to gather materials closely related to the life and work of Hannah Arendt. It is a small supplemental collection to the Hannah Arendt Library, a collection of materials discovered in her library at the time of her death and now maintained at the Stevenson Library, Bard College.

Rights and Usage Information for Bard College Archives and Special Collections Digital Collections: The materials on this web site are made available for use in research, teaching and private study.  For those purposes the user may reproduce these materials (by download, printing, etc.) without further permission, on the condition that proper attribution of the source for all copies is provided by clearly acknowledging the name of the Library, the title of the web page or resource, and the URL at which it was located.

For other uses of these materials, i.e. in commercial products, for broadcast or publication, permission must be obtained in advance from the Bard College Archives and Special Collections staff.