The collection includes information and keepsakes from Stella Aten's travels abroad as well as personal materials.

The earliest material in this collection are papers and correspondence of Thomas Russell Smith (1910-1996) including accounts of his travels with his family around the world in 1925-1926 and to Europe in 1929. The bulk of the collection consists of research notes, photographs, drafts, papers and correspondence about the history of cartography. There are also some notes from his course on the history of cartography.