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The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts, case files, a few subject files, printed material and three caricature drawings of Filonenko. By far the greatest amount of material is in the form of manuscripts and case files. The manuscripts fall into two categories: notes and drafts, written in French, dealing with legal matters, and a diary, containing a large number of clippings, in which Filonenko chronicles and comments upon events in Russia, Eastern and Western Europe during the period 1918-1920. The case files, primarily from the 1930s, contain materials gathered in the process of defending his clients, chiefly Russian emigres, before the French courts. Included among these are the records of Filonenko's defense of Nadezhda Plevitskai︠a︡-Skoblin in the General Miller kidnapping trial in 1937-38.

Box 1 (original acquisition) includes letters, manuscripts, and memorabilia, including four letters from Columbia professors relating to Bancroft's participation in General Studies Day, May 1977. The manuscripts consist of two diaries, one from 1926-1929, which includes her account of a European trip and a second for 1969; a typescript she prepared for the use of her students in General Studies History 5 in 1941, entitled "The Old Stone Age" (357 p.) with several pen-and-ink sketches of early man; and four notebooks on ancient art taken at a course taught by Professor Richard Brilliant in 1974.

The Margaret Kimmel travel diary recounts her struggle, and that of other American tourists, to return to the US as Germany launched its attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. Written mostly in pencil, the leather-bound, pocket-sized diary includes entries related to her everyday affairs (sights, meals, weather), the growing signs of war, and the complicated logistics for the return to New York. It includes an address book in the back with the names of Kimmel's new acquientances and, for many, how much she had borrowed and had to repay upon her return.

The diaries discuss the Revolution and the emigration in Harbin, China. Also included are genealogies of her family and a pencil sketch of a woman.

Correspondence and manuscripts of Van Doren, consisting of letters, poems, short stories, novels, plays, radio broadcast transcripts ("Invitation to Learning"), diaries, critical works, proofs, and printed works. Correspondents include Louise Bogan, Philip Booth, Babette Deutsch, Richard Eberhart, T.S. Eliot, John Gould Fletcher, Herbert Gorman, E.W. Howe, Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Louis MacNeice, Edgar Lee Masters, Lewis Mumford, Hyam Plutzik, Allen Tate, and Louis Zukovsky. Also, extensive correspondence with Robert Lax and Thomas Merton, as well as manuscripts by these two authors.

Letters of Mary Sumner Chapman, cousin of Charles Sumner, to her daughter Mary Adelaide; and letters to Mrs. Chapman from her sons Oscar and Corydon, written from army posts during the Civil War. The letters are personal and many were passed from one member of the family to another, each one adding a note for the next. Also, a diary in the hand of Mrs. Chapman for the year 1862, and of Benjamin Franklin Watkins, a descendant of Mrs. Chapman's niece, Laura Broughton Watkins.