The records include annual reports, board minutes, budgets, by-laws, correspondence, memos, publications, reports, scrapbooks, photographs and printed material. They document the settlement and its antecedent institutions from 1854 to 1994, offering a unique view of the first wave of the settlement house movement in America, as well as related philanthropy and social welfare activities in New York City over a 140 year period. The origins of Goddard-Riverside Community Center are documented in Series I, which includes eight institutional subseries. These records provide a wealth of information on philanthropic, social welfare and settlement work from the mid-19th century through the 1950s. Series II - IV document the activities of the settlement from 1959 to the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on the urban renewal period of the 1960s. Items in Series VII include photographs of staff, activities, facilities of Goddard-Riverside Community Center, as well as several of its predecessor institutions.

The Hudson Guild Records document the institution from its origins in the 1890s, when it organized clubs for Chelsea boys, to its work a century later, when it provided a wide range of social services to West Side residents.

Correspondence, manuscripts, lectures, notes, diaries, notebooks, reports, financial records, blueprints, photographs, and printed materials of Y.C. James Yen and the IIRR concerned with the development, sharing, and financing innovative methods of teaching, improving agriculture, health and family planning, and education in impoverished villages. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Pearl Buck, William O. Douglas, Nelson Rockefeller, and DeWitt Clinton.

The correspondence, research, and teaching files of French-American cultural historian and Columbia University professor emeritus Jacques Barzun (1907-2012).

Correspondence, manuscripts, notes, technical reports, memoranda, questionnaires, interview schedules, personal and professional documents, several photographs, one tape recording, and printed materials. The correspondence files contain letters to colleagues and researchers such as Bernard Berelson, Robert Lynd, Robert Merton, and Frank Stanton. The subject files document Lazarsfeld's many research projects such as the Admissions Officers Project, 1964-1970, the Planning Project for Advanced Training in Social Research, 1950-1955, and his first major endeavor, the Princeton Radio Research Project, 1937-1940. There are complete records for his 1954-1955 study on McCarthyism's effect on college teaching. These original materials consisting of correspondence, interview schedules, and questionnaires contain many detailed comments which could not be included in the published version of this study, THE ACADEMIC MIND (1958). Numerous files relate to Lazarsfeld's position as Associate Director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR). There are manuscripts of books, research papers, lectures, and articles by Lazarsfeld as well as by his students and colleagues.