The Jane M. Rosenthal papers contain a wide variety of historical and contemporary audio recordings, texts, elicitations and grammatical descriptions of Nahuatl, particularly the variety spoken in Tlaxcala, Mexico, both from the research of Rosenthal and others. Fieldwork in Tlaxcala (including photographs), archival research in Mexico and Chicago, and the work of many scholars that formed the Friends of Uto-Aztecan are represented.

The William O. Bright papers consist particularly of extensive correspondence relating mostly to his later academic work, a number of field notebooks from North America and India, publications on and by Indigenous North Americans (especially Karuk and other Californian tribes) and from linguistic societies, his own research and publications, and extensive lexical slip files (especially on Karuk, Spanish borrowings, and copies of Daythal Kendall's Takelma and Kalapuyan files). Many audio recordings are also present, some of which are duplicates of those at the California Language Archive. In addition to the materials browsable through the finding aid, Bright's email correspondence and computer files can be accessed onsite at the APS. William Bright's career extended to a wide variety of linguistic work, including Native Californian languages and literatures, Native American place names, editorships of major linguistics journals, and writing systems of the world.