Harrington was a Bureau of American Ethnology ethnologist involved in the study of over one hundred American tribes. His speciality was linguistics. Most of the material concerns California, southwestern, northwestern tribes and includes ethnological, archeological, historical notes; writings, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, biological specimens, and other types of documents. Also of concern are general linguistics, sign language, writing systems, writing machines, and sound recordings machines. There is also some material on New World Spanish, Old World languages. In addition, there are many manuscripts of writings that Harrington sketched, partially completed, or even completed but never published. The latter group includes not only writings about anthropological subjects but also histories, ranging from a biography of Geronimo to material on the history of the typewriter. The collection incorporates material of Richard Lynch Garner, Matilda Coxe Stevenson, and others. In his field work, Harrington seems sometimes to have worked within fairly firm formats, this especially being true when he was "rehearing" material, that is in using an informant to verify and correct the work of other researchers. Often, however, the interviews with informants (and this seems to have been the case even with some "rehearings") seem to have been rather free form, for there is a considerable intertwining of subjects. Nevertheless, certain themes frequently appear in his work, including annotated vocabularies concerning flora and fauna and their use, topography, history and biography, kinship, cosmology (including tribal astronomy), religion and philosophy, names and observations concerning neighboring tribes, sex and age division, material culture, legends, and songs. The fullness of such materials seems to have been limited only by the time Harrington had to spend with a goup and the knowledge of his informants.

This collection contains the professional papers of anthropologist Marvin Harris. Harris was a prominent anthropologist, best known for developing the controversial paradigm of cultural materialism. He authored several important books in the field of anthropology and taught at Columbia University and The University of Florida. The papers include correspondence, research materials, his publications, unpublished manuscripts, conference papers, lectures, subject files, teaching files, computer files, and photographs.

Timothy Asch was an anthropologist and ethnographic film maker who devoted his professional life to using film as a recording and teaching medium. His papers cover the period from 1966 until his premature death in 1994 and reflect his active career in the field. A large portion of the files relates to his work among the Yanomami people of Venezuela and to his concern with bias in film making.

This collection is comprised of the professional papers of Ted Allan Rathbun. The collection documents his career as a forensic anthropologist and educator through correspondence, publications and teaching materials. The collection includes the publications resulting from his research in South Carolina, Egypt, and Glorieta, New Mexico, as well as a small portion of his research data. His other writings that can be found in the collection include his monographs, journal articles, papers presented at conferences, and reviews he wrote for various journals and publications. The collection also includes materials relating to his consulting activities for law enforcement agencies, and military and historical organizations. Additionally, the collection contains materials related to organizations that he was a member of and his syllabi and lecture notes as a professor at the University of South Carolina. The collection also includes Rathbun's course notes when, as a student at the University of Kansas, he studied under William Bass, Ellis Kerley and other notable anthropologists. Among his correspondents were J. Lawrence Angel, Eve Cockburn, Henry Dobyns, Henry Field, T. Dale Stewart, and T. Cuyler Young.

The Myron Bement Smith collection consists of two parts, the papers of Myron Bement Smith and his wife Katharine and the Islamic Archives. It contains substantial material about his field research in Italy in the 1920s and his years working on Islamic architecture in Iran in the 1930s. Letters describe the milieu in which he operated in Rochester NY and New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s; the Smiths' life in Iran from 1933 to 1937; and the extensive network of academic and social contacts that Myron and Katharine developed and maintained over his lifetime. The Islamic Archives was a project to which Smith devoted most of his professional life. It includes both original materials, such as his photographs and notes, and items acquired by him from other scholars or experts on Islamic art and architecture. Smith intended the Archives to serve as a resource for scholars interested in the architecture and art of the entire Islamic world although he also included some materials about non-Islamic architecture.

These records constitute the morgue files for the Science Service, and as such contain past articles, press releases and other materials produced by the Science Service. In addition are supplemental photographs, news clippings, scientific papers and articles, obituaries and related topical information. Files are categorized according to Library of Congress …

The collection consists of approximately 50 cubic feet of material documenting Aladdin Industries Inc., manufacturers of vacuum ware and lunch boxes. The majority of the material dates from 1947 to the 1970s. The strength of the collection is with the lunch box documentation and product development, marketing, and sales records. There is some …

The Papers of John Victor Murra document his personal and professional life through audiovisual materials, correspondence, diaries, graduate school notes, lectures, photocopies of archival materials, photographs, published materials collected by Murra, reading and research notes and his own writings. The materials span more than 70 years. The collection includes materials relating to Murra's immigration to the United States and later lawsuit for naturalization, his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Chicago, his experiences in the Spanish Civil War and in Ecuador during the Second World War as Don Collier's assistant, his teaching career at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and abroad including the University of Puerto Rico, Vassar College, Yale University, and Cornell University, and his research interests such as the fieldwork projects he directed at Hunuco and Lake Titicaca. The bulk of his correspondence may be found in Series I - Correspondence which mostly consists of his communications with former classmates from the University of Chicago, colleagues in the United States and abroad, and former students. Series IV - Biographical and Series VII - Graduate School and Teaching contain a significant amount of material pertaining to Murra's studies at the University of Chicago and his lawsuit for naturalization. Correspondence and newspaper editorials from F. C. Cole and Robert Redfield as well as oral history transcripts of Murra's personal reminiscences are among the items found in these series. For many years, Murra also kept personal diaries, originally intended as records of his dreams, which form Series III - Dream Archives. Although this collection is primarily textual in nature, there are also a photograph and an audio-visual series. The later includes recordings of Murra's Lewis Henry Morgan lectures. The occasional photograph also appears throughout other series.

The collection, which dates from 1895 to 1972 and measures 23.97 linear feet, documents the career and travels of Professor Lorenzo Dow Turner. The collection is comprised of correspondence, academic papers, research materials, books, newspaper and journal articles, sound recordings, and photographs.

This collection contains the professional papers of William Curtis Sturtevant and documents his activities as Curator of North American Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History, his work as the editor-in-chief of the Handbook of North American Indians, his research among the Seminole and Iroquois people, and other professional activities. The collection is comprised of books, sound recordings, research and field notes, realia, artifacts, clippings, microfilm, negatives, slides, photographs, manuscripts, correspondence, memorandums, card files, exhibition catalogs, articles, and bibliographies.