Collections

The M. Watt Espy papers chronicle the extensive research efforts that led to the creation of the Capital Punishment Research Project and the database known as the Espy File. Espy spent three decades gathering and indexing documentation of legal executions in the United States. His papers contain both primary and secondary sources used to catalog thousands of instances of capital punishment in the United States and its territories since the 1600s. The collection includes material from corrections records, newspapers, county histories, legal proceedings, and books. In addition to the records pertaining specifically to the death penalty, there is also a selection of magazines collected by Espy that cover true crime stories as well as life in the American Old West.

The original student government of the State College for Teachers, founded in 1917. Myskania acted as a secret society which selected its own members, but its duties were gradually assumed by the Student Association and it was disbaned in 1979.

The collection documents the Jewish community in New York's Capital Region and the creation of the Albany Jewish Community Center.

Chartered in 1934, as the Tri-City Newspaper Guild of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, the Guild signed its first contract with the Albany Times Union in 1937. The collection includes correspondence, minutes, contracts, and organizing files. The majority of material in the collection is photocpied.

The Norman Studer Papers document his career as both an educator and ardent Catskill folklorist. The collection includes significant material relating to his work as director of the Downtown Community School in New York City and Camp Woodland in the Catskills.

This collection predominantly contains German and English manuscripts, plays, poetry, lectures, and articles in newspapers and magazines, 1933-1969. There is also correspondence with friends, writers and with Twentieth Century Fox pertaining to copyright infringement, 1940-1948. Otto Furth also wrote under the pseudonym Owen Elford.

This collection documents Siena College professor Dr. Patricia Stocking Brown's (1942-2004) research and scholarship in biology as well as her breast cancer advocacy, research, and education work.

Personal and professional papers of Paul Bruce Pettit, professor of theatre at the University at Albany, 1947-1972. Includes essays, play scripts and literary writings produced while enrolled in graduate programs at Cornell University, his theses (M.A. 1943 and Ph.D. 1949), correspondence, offprints of articles about theater related subjects, newspaper clippings, scripts of radio broadcasts (1947-1948), and lecture notes from Pettit's tenure as a professor and chairman of the Department of Theatre. While on a Fulbright Scholarship Pettit directed the National Theater in Cyprus (1964 and 1965) and was known for his work in arena theater.

The Paul H. Appleby collection is composed of correspondence and Appleby's writings and speeches from his experience in government service.

The Paul Leser Papers document not only the life and career of anthropologist Paul Leser, but also contain materials pertaining to Leser's sister, Maria Lingemann and her husband Heinrich Lingemann, and earlier members of the Leser family. Although the collection contains correspondence between Paul and his brother, Albert (Leser) Lestoque, a separate collection, the Albert (Leser) Lestoque Papers, held at the University at Albany's Department of Special Collections & Archives documents the life and career of Paul Leser's brother as well as providing additional Leser family documents and material.