The committee memberships series includes minutes, protocols and reports reflecting Somerville’s work as a an expert in ethics on the Law Reform Commission of Canada, the Royal Victoria Hospital’s Research Ethics committee, Expert Advisory Committee to the Canadian Red Cross on Stored Serum Samples, the National Research Council Human Subject Research Ethics Committee, the World Health Organization, the World Jurist Association, UNESCO, the McGill Aids Centre, the Beatty Memorial Lecture, the NWMO, the OACG, the CCES, and the Colloquium on Transdisciplinarity.

This media relations series documents Somerville’s many and varied interactions with the media through contact lists, articles, interviews, personal publicity files, and photographs by Barbara Woodley.

The personal matters/family series is the most varied one, documenting family life through correspondence and photographs and personal life through awards and honours from both Canada and Australia. Also there are records reflecting her interest in cats and the art community, particularly the artist Jacques Deshaies.

The substantial writing/ publishing activities series covers most of her academic career in Canada, 1979-2015 and provides worked drafts of her most substantial publications including The Ethical Canary: Science, Society and the Human Spirit, Death Talk: the Case against Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide and 2006 CBC Massey Lectures, The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit. The range of her publishing activities is also represented by many examples of letters to the editor as an ethical activist on issues such as euthanasia, AIDS, human rights and biotechnology. Also included are draft copies of her book The Ethical Canary in various translations.

The communications series chiefly reflects the public role of Somerville as an ethicist and researcher through a mixture of personal/professional correspondence, often with colleagues, invitations to events and greeting cards.