Robert Cushman Murphy (1887-1973), one of the twentieth century's great ornithologists, was curator of mammals and birds at the Brooklyn Museum (1911-1917) and was curator of birds and later chairman of birds at the American Museum of Natural History (1917-1973). The world's foremost authority on sea birds, in 1936, he penned Oceanic Birds of South America, a two volume set. An ardent traveler and explorer, he kept copious notes of his travels, which he typed up, illustrated and had bound. The APS library owns forty-two bound journals. Murphy was made an APS member in 1946. A pioneer in the study of the ecology, a louse, fish, plant, lizard, an Antarctic inlet, spider, and two mountains have acquired his name. This collection contains diaries, journals, articles, addresses and observations of Murph;, generously illustrated with newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, sketches, maps, and charts.

Audio recordings, primarily linguistic field recordings of Native American languges, removed from the James M. Crawford papers. The bulk of the recordings are in three areas: Alabama songs, stories, and fiddle music; Cocopa folklore, autobiographical stories, songs, and elicited words and sentences; Yuchi autobiographical stories, conversations, and elicitied word lists. Other material includes: Cherokee conversations; Chickasaw word and phrases lists; readings from a Chontal-Spanish dictionary; a Diegueño text; words lists and discussion regarding the Mobilian trade language (Yama); intermixed Mobilian, Choctaw, and Koasati word lists; Mohave songs, with explanations; a Navajo elicitation session, with interview and conversation; elicited Shoshoni expressions; Tolowa songs, Yavapai word lists and texts; and Yuki words and expressions. The small amount of non-Native American material in the collection generally consists of unidentified conversations, readings of English and Russian texts, and recordings of baby talk.