Gotlieb Center, a trove of rare, unique documents, traces 20th-century figures

Boston University students need not look far to find one of the most comprehensive archive centers in the country. In fact, they do not even need to leave campus.

The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, located on the fifth floor of Mugar Memorial Library, offers many priceless documents for research.

Managing Director Vita Paladino has been at the Center for 30 of its 43-year existence.

Paladino said the Center’s mission statement is “to capture and document history by collecting the manuscripts from individuals who play a significant part in the fields of journalism, poetry, literature and criticism, dance, music, theatre, film, television and political and religious movements.”

The center was founded by its namesake Howard Gotlieb, who died Dec. 1, to amass and preserve a variety of 20th century collectables.

The preserved documents, ranging from personal correspondence and playbills to drafts of larger manuscripts, are made available to any undergraduate student or general researcher who needs access for a paper, and graduate students working on their dissertations or doctorates also have access to these papers.

Manuscripts once belonging to Martin Luther King, Jr. are held at the Center, as are the papers of the Rev. Howard Thurman, who was the Marsh Chapel dean from 1953 to 1965. Nobel Peace Prize winner and BU professor Elie Wiesel has a collection of documents as well.

Paladino said although the Center has many documents relating to former BU affiliates, it does not just preserve documents of those who had connections to the university.

Associate Director Sean Noel said the Center had a display commemorating the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote, and another one displaying the correspondence and photographs of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Dan Rather’s Emmys and Jean Kelly’s Oscars were also on display, as were manuscripts pertaining to Mary Louise Parker and correspondence by or about Edward R. Murrow.

College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Sabrina McDonald said she worked at the Center for all of last year and over the summer.

“I stayed downstairs and did filing and worked with correspondence,” she said. “I haven’t gone to any of the Student Discovery Seminars, but I did go to a lecture that was given by Mary Louise Parker.”

McDonald said the Center owned “stuff from Fred Astaire that I thought was pretty cool.” She said she also enjoyed working with the manuscripts that Angela Lansbury donated, and did not know much about Bette Davis before she started to work there.

“I thought it was cool to hold a letter written by Bette Davis or Angela Lansbury,” she said.

Two events the Howard Gotlieb Center holds every year are the Lawrence G. Blackmon Book Collecting Contest, which has been sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries of Boston University since 1967 and the Student Discovery Seminars.

The Book Collecting Contest was designed to encourage students to begin their own book collections. According to the Center’s website, each collection “will be judged by the extent to which it represents a well-defined field of interest.” The winners of this contest receive monetary prizes.

The Discovery Seminars are designed to give interested members of the BU community an intimate look at documents from a particular era about a specific topic. Topics for the 2005-2006 academic year include “Journalists Under Fire: Reporting the Vietnam War,” available April 4, and “Illustrators, Cartoonists and Comic Strips,” available April 18.