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The collection contains various documents relating to the practice of enslavement in the Americas. It includes three documents related to the case of Joseph Pochin and John Milner who were accused of murder on the island of Jamaica, ca. 1681; a group of police reports for the city of New Orleans, August-November 1833, listing all arrests, mainly concerned with Afro-Americans sentenced to the chain gang; and other documents.

Incunabula (books printed before 1501) from the various book collections have been shelved together by Goff number, the number assigned in Fredrick Goff's bibliography, Incunabula in American Libraries. There is a separate card catalog by author in RBML. Records for these titles derived from the ISTC (Incunabula Short Title Catalog) are found in CLIO; however they lack subject and other added entries.

The Latin inscriptions, which predominate in the collection, are sepulchral. Items worthy of p;ublication have been published in CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM LATINARUM, volumes VI and XV, and in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAELOGY, 1899 and 1906. There are 11 inscibed pipes (lead) and 15 stamped bricks among the Latin inscriptions. There are only 3 Greek inscriptions (again, sepulchral) in the collection. Squeezes of published Greek inscriptions, ca. 500, are also available for study in conjunction with the published inscriptions

Artifacts collected by Dr Dodge while traveling with Columbia professor Henry Drisler during 1859 and 1860. The majority of the items are souvenirs from Roman and Pompeiian ruins, such as a fragment from the ruins of Vespasian's Temple in Rome, and a piece of a wine jar found in Pompeii. Several other Americans and European curios are also included. For a journal of Dodge's travels, see Columbia Ms. No. 141