Collections : [University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library]

The Annual Reports series (0.8 linear feet and digital files (online)) provides a yearly overview of the state of the department. The title of these reports changed over the years. They were first called annual conferences or retreats, then committee reports, and finally annual reports. These records include the annual reports from the chair and, occasionally, the associate chair as well as annual reports of various committees, programs, centers, laboratories, task forces, and other units within the department. Special faculty accomplishments are also noted in some reports from the 1990s.

Related material, including retreat planning material, can be found in the Topical Files series.

The Committees and Departmental Meetings (10 linear feet and digital files (online)) series includes departmental meeting (also referred to as faculty meeting) minutes as well as the records of the executive committee and several smaller committees. The executive committee records provide the most complete source for documenting the history of the department. The minutes, which were assembled over the years, include not only the minutes of executive committee meetings but also correspondence, reports, committee agendas, announcements, and miscellaneous material broadly pertaining to executive committee business. Besides the minutes, the executive committee records also include six folders of memoranda (1938-1984).

This series also contains correspondence and memoranda of several other committees. They include: the Ad Hoc Committee for the Curriculum in Social Organization; the Committee on Undergraduate Education; the Department Chairman Search Committee; the Student-Faculty Committee; and the Task Force on Diversity and Discrimination. The Committee on Undergraduate Education's records provide some insight into the changing nature of the sociology curriculum. The Department Chairman Search Committee folder is rather thin and offers only limited information regarding the selection process.

The Architectural Drawings series includes working drawings and sketches, primarily created to explain the construction to the contractor, and some of which were digitized in part and in whole, of residential and commercial buildings designed. Of particular note are photos, conceptual sketches, plans and artist renderings of the interior and exterior of the Robert E. Schwartz house and its construction, including the dome, and architectural drawings of the United Church of Christ "triangle building" and plan views as well as the Stuart J. Bergstein house, portions of which have been digitized.

(The digitized football team photos displayed in the Bentley Library Image Bank include scans from prints and negatives in the Athletic Department records as well as team photos from other collections, including Rentschler's Studio, U-M News and Information Service, Michigan Union, U-M Photographps Vertical File, and other sources.)

The Background Materials series, (.10 linear feet, 1967-1999), includes a curriculum vitae with a chronological list of Sparling's choreographic works through the year 1999, a journal written while he was on tour in the Soviet Union in 1973, news clippings, and other biographical materials.

The series Photographs and Posters (1892, 1949-1980) is comprised of outsized photographs and posters. Photographs include the Symphony Band, 1958-1963, various "Band Day" events, a 1970s football formation, and a 1980 formation spelling out Revelli. Also included is an 1892 group photo identified as "University of Michigan Band." Posters announcing concerts during the period 1958 to 1963 are included along with several large format posters from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe promoting the band's 1961 tour. Foreign newspapers on the 1961 tour are also included.

The Radio Tahrir and related material series (648 digital audio files (online) and 0.1 linear feet) consists primarily of episodes, episode segments, and unique series associated with the radio magazine, Radio Tahrir.

Radio Tahrir episodes typically consisted of multiple kinds of content, including commentaries from experts as well as listening audience members, interviews with guests, literary readings and recitations, reports, and/or testimonials. Guests on the program included activists, attorneys, authors, artists, religious and secular community leaders, filmmakers, journalists, musicians, poets, and scholars. Although a wide range of cultural, historical, literary, political, and religious topics relating to different Arabic and/or Muslim communities around the world were discussed on the program, those relating to Iraq, Israel, and Palestine are prominently featured.

Also included are several special series associated with Radio Tahrir. The most prominent of these series included are "Maqam: From Cordoba to Baghdad" (circa 1997), which focused on Arabic music and featured Simon Shaheen; "6 Arab American Poets" (1997); and "Fen Mejnoon with Dean and Maysoon" (2004-2006), which was co-hosted by Arab American comedians Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid.

Other material in this series are several National Alliance of Third World Journalists' Alliance Report episodes as well as physical "6 Arab American Poets" brochures.