This series includes all notebooks Roth used on various field surveys he undertook, mostly around Kansas. It includes summer survey trips dating from 1974-1988 (not inclusive) and 2000; hawk nesting accounts from 1980-2000; a notebook for field ecology notes dating from 1996-1999, and field records that Roth put in numerical and chronological order, from volume I through volume XXXII (32), dating from 1957-2014. These field notebooks included Lawrence High School field trips from fall and spring semesters, personal bird counting trips, Kansas Assiciation of Biology Teachers (KABT) or Kansas Biological Survey (KBS)-sponsored trips, and other trips that correspond to but do not appear to overlap with the summer field survey notebooks.

Roth typically noted locations visited each day, birds sited or other animals/objects of note or interest for that particular trip, who was on the trip with him, mileage and costs for reimbursement (such as for gasoline, tolls, and food), weather conditions and temperatures, observations of sites visited and any specimens collected, etc. Some volumes may have notes in another person's (student's?) hand; occasionally an item was interleaved in a volume, such as a newspaper clipping, grocery list, empty envelope used for notes, etc. These items have been left in situ.