Collections

1865-Present
The Archives holds 1,300 cubic feet of records, manuscripts, video reels and cassettes, and about 9,000 positive and negative photoprints, the bulk of which are post-World War II. Approximately 50% of the records have been arranged, described and preserved according to archival standards. The Archives has unpublished finding aids, inventories for manuscript and photo collections and subject or survey guides to most collections.

The Archives has most course bulletins, commencement and convocation programs, and alumni directories and a small book collection. It holds a large but not complete run of student yearbooks, including Vincentian, Liber and Res Gestae (School of Law), Pharmalog (Pharmacy), Closing Entry (business school), Pedagogue and Warrior (Teachers' College), Moorings (Notre Dame College) and Tomahawk (Notre Dame College of St. John's at Staten Island). St. John's Today (the University newspaper), The Torch (student newspaper), The Storm Front (Staten Island campus newspaper), and several other older titles (e.g., St. John's News, The Downtowner, Red Owl, and Arrow) are available on microform and in hard copy. There is a small collection of oral history tape cassettes for which there is an inventory but no transcripts. Facilities are available to listen to the tapes.

The collections include records and papers of the founding and establishment of St. John's College (and St. John's Preparatory School), Brooklyn, New York, in the 1870s; its quiet growth and development through c. 1925; the creation of law, pharmacy and business professional schools in the 1920s and 1930s at a separate campus in downtown Brooklyn ("Brooklyn Center"); the college's transition to University status and the establishment of a doctoral program in the 1930s; on-campus military training during World Wars I and II; the post-war impact of the G.I. bill and the commencement of coeducation; the growth and importance of intercollegiate athletics; the withdrawal of the University from the two Brooklyn campuses to the Queens campus between 1955 and 1972; the faculty strike of 1965-67 that marked a profound transition in administrative structure and governance of the University; and the establishment of branch campuses at the former Notre Dame College of Staten Island in 1972 and Rome in 1996. Record groups are sketchy for the earlier and some later periods.