The Joan V. Bondurant Papers includes documents relating to Bondurant's life (1918 and 2003). The collection includes documents relating to the non-violence movement and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, manuscripts and published articles and books, political and personal papers from her work in India, notes and class lectures from her time at Michigan State University and the University of California Berkeley, personal and professional correspondence, photographs, and unpublished family poetry.

The Norbert Krapf Papers consists of 50 boxes and 1 oversize pamphlet of Krapf's personal papers, including 24 boxes of correspondence; 23 boxes and one oversize pamphlet of manuscript and printed material by Krapf; one box of material from Krapf's public appearances; and one box of essays, newspaper articles, and Krapf's curriculum vitae. Items of particular interest to researchers include manuscripts, typescripts, and printed ephemera from Krapf's poetry collections, including Finding the Grain: Pioneer Journals, Franconian Folktales, Ancestral Poems (1976), Under Open Sky: Poets on William Cullen Bryant (1986), Beneath the Cherry Sapling: Legends from Franconia (1988), Somewhere in Southern Indiana: Poems of Midwestern Origins (1993) Blue-Eyed Grass (1997), Bittersweet Along the Expressway (2000), and The Country I Come From (2002); and correspondence from well-known writers and artists, including Robert Bly, Martin Booth, Joseph Bruchac II, Siv Cedering, Diana Chang, Vince Clemente, John DePol, Rita Dove, Louise Erdrich, Carolyn Forché, Donald Hall, Michael Hamburger, Seamus Heaney, William Heyen, David Ignatow, Aaron Kramer, Adrian Louis, Robert Morgan, Lisel Mueller, John F. Nims, Tillie Olsen, Linda Pastan, Robert Pinsky, William Stafford, Lucien Stryk, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Penn Warren, and Richard Wilbur.

The papers consist of letters, manuscript poems and prose pieces, pictures, and printed material. Major groups of correspondence include: Letters written by Southey to Anna Eliza (Kempe) Stothard Bray (1790-1883) between 1831 and 1839 in which he discusses literature, politics, local history, and antiquities; letters to Humphrey Fleming Senhouse (1781-1841) dated from 1805 to 1838; seventeen "Autobiographical Epistles" written by Southey to John May between July 26, 1820 and January 8, 1826, and correspondence with the poet William Wordsworth. The collection also contains letters written by Southey's second wife Caroline Anne (Bowles) Southey (1786-1854) to Mrs. Bray and others. Many of these letters concern Southey's failing health. Letters written by Southey's son, Charles Cuthbert Southey (1819-1888), are also in the collection, as well as original handwritten fragments by Richard Duppa (1770-1831) and Southey.