Fonds reflects Jones’ work as a scientist, but not her activities as a poet. Over two-thirds of the materials are student notes coupled with quizzes, laboratories and reports. These largely stem from her Cornell period, and cover graduate seminars in population genetics and biochemistry as well as her doctoral research in plant breeding and plant physiology. There are also notes for courses on statistics, genetics, agriculture and animal physiology from the University of the West Indies.

Materials related to Jones' research comprise laboratory notes and graphs, drafts of papers and correspondence with publishers, scientific supply companies, and other scientists in her field. Administrative papers related to research include applications to the National Research Council, budget statements, requisitions and invoices for equipment, records of laboratory assistants and summer students, and correspondence on travel arrangements.

Her teaching of genetics and zoology is illustrated by her class and seminar notes, laboratory outlines, reading lists, and examinations. The administrative side is represented by memoranda on course changes and course evaluations, correspondence on the rental of films and the purchase of equipment, files on freshman counseling and the supervision of graduate students and letters of recommendation for students. Supplementing this are minutes of faculty meetings and materials relating to the McGill Association of University Teachers.

Biographical material on Jones may be found in a file containing curricula vitae, obituaries, and correspondence concerning the Barbara Jones Fund.

The fonds primarily reflects Pappius’s activities as a researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (MNI/H): both her experimental research as such and various support activities, including academic publication, coordination of research projects with colleagues, and acquiring funding. It also contains much information about her leadership of the Clinical Neurochemistry Laboratory. The fonds contains smaller amounts of documentation regarding her activities as a professor at McGill University, her administrative roles at the MNI/H, and her participation in professional organizations, which reflects the smaller place that those roles occupied in her professional life.

The period of time best documented in the fonds spans the early 1980s to Pappius’s retirement in 1995. Correspondence with colleagues, mostly though not exclusively work-related, contains relatively more material from Pappius’s early career; although, here too, most of the material dates from the 1980s and after.

The main document types in the fonds related to Pappius’s research activities are experiment worksheets and printed tabular research data. Many of the research-related files contain negatives of autoradiographies, with a smaller number of photographic prints. Correspondence can be found in many series besides series F (Correspondence), as much of Pappius’s work was collaborative in nature.

The fonds is divided into eight series: (A) Research, (B) Academic events, (C) Teaching, (D) Administrative activities, (E) Professional organizations, (F) Correspondence, (G) Personal collections, and (H) Visual documents.