Fonds consists of correspondence, exhibition and performance files, film and video files, lectures and writings, teaching files, drawings, designs, posters, ephemera and clippings, primarily from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The collection includes correspondence with Brooks’ foster family, his birth parents family, and scientific colleagues; and reminiscences about interment campus “A” including a class portrait, the “Khaki University”, the experience of writing McGill University matriculation exams, and academic life at McGill. While Brooks spent the majority of his academic career at the University of Western Ontario, this collection concerns his childhood and introduction to academic life shaped by the internment camp in Farnham, Quebec.

This history of Dawson College from 1945 to 1950 was prepared in collaboration with David H. Kennedy (B.Eng. 1952, M.Eng. 1953, Dip.Man. and B.A. 1962).

The fonds consist of draft reports and texts of speeches given by Vincent de Pasciuto-Ponte as well as bound reports and promotional material related to projects that Ponte was involved in through his work with architect I.M. Pei including McGill College Avenue and Place Ville Marie in Montreal, Quebec. In addition, the fonds contains published materials such as periodicals related to art and architecture, maps, travel literature and guidebooks (mostly relating to travel to Rome, Italy). Six black and white photographs of Ponte are included.

Fonds consists primarily of originals and printed materials concerning courses Coughlin taught in the Library School (1952-1979), and her own graduate studies and research (1958-1975). Her teaching materials comprise lecture notes, supplemented by clippings, articles, and bibliographies, for courses on book selection (including class lists, marks (restricted), a student project and examinations), research methods, and library work with children. Material stemming from her graduate studies comprises two papers submitted for her M.A., and two unrevised copies of her D.L.S. thesis on Canadian public library services. Her continuing interest in public libraries in Canada generated a series of research files of notes, photocopies and clippings (1961-1975).

Contains copies of fur trade documents bearing on the Mandan-Hidatsa trade with North West Company posts in central Canada, 1793-1805. Includes the journals of John Macdonell (McGill), David Thompson (Archives of Ontario), François-Antoine Larocque (LAC & Université de Montréal, Baby Collection. Draft before publication of: Early fur trade on the Northern Plains: Canadian traders among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738-1818 : the narratives of John Macdonell, David Thompson, Franc̦ois-Antoine Larocque, and Charles McKenzie / edited and with an introduction by W. Raymond Wood and Thomas D. Thiessen. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, c1985.

This collection consists of letters and documents collected by Smith while acting as correspondent of "The Standard" during the Russo-Japanese war, 1904. Included are several communications from the Japanese General Staff.

Fonds contains the notebook kept by Walker Herbert Drury of his bacteriology laboratories while a student at McGill University, from 1906 to 1908, but mainly 1906.

The collection consists of six of Walter Crane’s sketchbooks. Two of the sketchbooks date to the summer of 1864, and the remaining four date to the summers of 1897, 1901, 1903, and 1905. The collection’s dates offer a contrast between Crane’s early and later career as an artist. The contents feature his preliminary designs, pictorial observations of the world, and textual notes.

Crane’s sketchbooks are filled with landscapes and towns and building interiors and exteriors from Crane’s life in England and travels to Ireland. Aligned with Crane’s commissioned and published works, the sketchbooks include sketches for his book designs, a heraldic eagle, and plans for a panel painting or frieze. Flora, fauna, men, women, children, Greco-Roman figures and architectural details make up the wide range of subjects covered in the sketchbooks.

The drawings range from Crane’s rough ideas expressed in his preliminary sketches and line drawings to tonal drawings and studies of individuals, landscapes, and flowers. The drawing techniques play with perspective, topography, bodily gesture, facial expression, tone, line, outline, form, and colour.

Crane’s notations appear throughout the sketchbooks, including on the sketches themselves and on their facing pages. He also hand-wrote inspirational excerpts from poems and essays which includes quotes from Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin works.

Between blank and torn pages, the medium for the textual and visual content shifts between pen and pencil on paper. Several landscapes are full-page watercolours on paper.

The fonds includes a copy of No. 3 Canadian General Hospital (McGill), 1914-1919 owned by Walter de M. Scriver and ephemera relating to Canadian General Hospital No. 3. It also contains a handwritten poem entitled "Tune of T'anks," composed by Scriver for his family and dated France, 1915.