Fourteen letters between Frederica de Laguna and John Bierhorst, from April 7, 1978 to May 31, 1979, initially regarding a permission question, with additonal subsequent correspondence including de Laguna's reaction to a review of Under Mount Saint Elias, reference to her travel plans, offering comments on Yakutat Tlingit informants and Yakutat music, and mention of Franz Boas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ruth Benedict, David McAllister, and Alan Lomax. Includes copies of obituaries (in 2004) for de Laguna and the program for her memorial service at Bryn Mawr College.

These field notes, compiled by de Laguna and Catherine McClellan, include archaeological investigations, transcripts of interviews with community members and sketches. Tlingit material recorded at Yakutat, Angoon, Carcross, and Teslin, with small amount at Atlin; Ahtna material recorded at Chitina, Copper Center, and Chistochina.

These reels contain materials relating to the Ahtna, Copper River, Tetlin, Upper Tanana, Southern Tuchone, Burwash Landing, and Yukon Native groups. Also included are lists of plants, and transcripts of interviews.

Field recordings made by Frederica de Laguna at Upernavik, Greenland in July and August 1979. Stories in Greenlandic Inuktitut and conversation in Danish.

Tlingit recordings made on 1 wire spool in Angoon, Alaska, 21 June 1950, by Frederica de Laguna and Catherine McClellan. Text, "How Angoon was destroyed in 1882"; translation on typed sheets made by native from recording. Song of the Raven Hat. Three "Tsimshian" songs. The recordings were made by wire recorder loaned by Wenner-Gren Foundation; research the result of funds from the Arctic Institute of North America.

The 116 black-and-white photoprints in the Frederica de Laguna Greenland Photograph Collection originate from Frederica de Laguna's six-month expedition to Greenland taken with Danish anthropologist Therkel Mathiassen in 1929. The expedition is significant for being the first scientific archeological excavation in Greenland. The trip was a transformational one for de Laguna, for through it she experienced her first taste of extensive anthropological fieldwork. Because of it, she decided to pursue a career in anthropology upon her return to the United States, enrolling in the doctoral program in anthropology at Columbia University under Franz Boas. Images in the collection include photographs of Kalaallit (Greenlandic Inuit) people, de Laguna and Mathiassen in the field, the Arctic landscape, excavation sites, settlements, animals, sea vessels, etc.

Recorded by Frederica de Laguna in the field at Yakutat, Alaska in 1952. Contains various types of Tlingit songs, including mourning songs, drinking songs, love songs, personal songs, and 3 Athabaskan songs, most likely Southern Tutchone. Includes Raven and other stories with some translations.

Ahtna songs and stories recorded in Copper Center, Alaska by Frederica de Laguna in 1958. Includes numerous interviews on autobiographical topics, explanations of Ahtna songs, sleep doctors, and traditional narratives. Also includes vocabulary related to kinship terms. Songs include potlatch songs, love songs, drinking songs, and songs of Tlingit origin.

Field recordings made in Chistochina and Copper Center, Alaska in 1960. Includes potlatch songs, love songs, Christmas tree songs, sorry songs, dance songs, and others. Some songs Yakutat Tlingit, Upper Tanana, or Tanacross. Also includes some Ahtna vocabulary.

Tlingit recordings made in Yakutat, Alaska (Tapes 1-7); Ahtna recordings made at Chitina, Tazlina, and Chistochina (Tape 8 - Tape 10, track 22); Southern Tutchone recordings made at Klukshu, Yukon Territory (Tape 10, tracks 23-31). Includes personal songs, mourning songs, drinking songs, love songs, shaman songs, and children's songs. Collections formerly titled "Tlingit and Yakutat songs." Renamed in October 2019 to clarify presence of recordings from other communities.

Ahtna and Southern Tutchone songs, stories, and interviews. The majority of this collection consists of Ahtna songs and stories recorded by Frederica de Laguna in 1968. Most were recorded at Copper Center, with additional ones also recorded at Cantwell, Chistochina, Gulkana, and Tetlin. Includes dance songs, sorry songs, potlatch songs, sleep doctor songs, and others. Includes "Gulkana Potlatch Given by Bill Joe and Kate Sanford for Recovery of Maggie Joe from Illness." Some songs are Tlingit, Upper Tanana, or Tanacross in origin. Also includes Ahtna stories, autobiographical accounts, vocabularies, and interviews. There are also some Southern Tutchone songs recorded at Burwash Landing, Yukon Territory. Formerly titled "Materials Recorded at Copper Center, Alaska."

An archaeological anthropologist and linguist, John Alden Mason spent the majority of his career at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Penn in 1907, Mason received a doctorate at Berkeley (1911) for his ethnographic work on the Salinan Indians of California, but his diverse interests in later years ran the gamut from Puerto Rican folklore to Piman languages and cultures (including Pima, Papago, Pima Bajo, Northern and Southern Tepehuan, and Tepecano), Mayan, Aztec, and Incan archaeology, and the languages of South American Indians. Mason was curator of the University Museum at Penn from 1926 until his retirement in 1958. The Mason Papers include both in-coming and outgoing correspondence, linguistic material, notes, and photographs relating to Mason's work in the southwestern U.S., northern Mexico, and South America. Centered on the years after Mason's return to Philadelphia in 1926, the collection covers all aspects of Mason's professional life, from reports on field work to answering casual questions referred to him through the University Museum to data and analyses on Piman and other languages. The collection also contains voluminous files relating to the Mason's editorship of the American Anthropologist (bulk: 1945-1948). Of special note are a series of class notes (1908-1910) kept by Mason for course work in ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under Edward Sapir and Frank Speck.

The material in the collection is an assembly of unrelated recording collections made by multiple collectors. This collection consists of recordings on wire or phonograph discs sent by the APS Library to the Library of Congress in December 1970 in exchange for duplication of the material on to archival reel-to-reel tapes. The original formats are housed at the Library of Congress.

The Anthony F. C. Wallace Papers include correspondence to and from 20th century anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, linguists, and psychiatrists and provides a wealth of resources for the study of technological and social change, American Indians, culture and personality, revitalization movements, the anthropological study of religion, and the cultural and biological bases of behavior. In addition to Wallace's correspondence, research notes, and drafts, the collection includes Wallace family correspondence and photographs, as well as Wallace's writings from childhood through recent years.