The National Organization for Women, Rochester Chapter Records represents local examples of action women organized during the 1970s- 2000s. This collection is divided into four series: Chapter Records, Issue Campaigns, Printed Materials and Women Against a Violent Environment. The Chapter Records include by-laws, board of director meeting minutes, a member survey and issues from the chapter newsletter. Issue Campaigns includes materials related to supporting women's reproductive health rights, welfare, equal rights and pay equity. The third series includes pamphlets and newspaper clippings documenting various issue campaigns associated with the local chapter. The Women Against a Violent Environment series includes meeting minutes and newspaper clippings from this active sub-group of NOW.

The Alternatives for Battered Women Collection consists of two scrapbooks compiled by Lura Carstens and Marion Strand of material that documents the history of Alternatives for Battered Women. Many of the records are from the files of Helen French. The scrapbooks include originals and photocopies of news clippings, meeting minutes, speeches, reports, and other relevant materials.

The Rochester Poetry Society Records includes minutes, correspondence, clippings, programs, membership lists, scrapbooks, and poems by society members.

The collection documents collaborative efforts within the religious community to meet human need, achieve mutual understanding, and work for social justice. Concerns addressed have included: hunger, poverty, housing, public education, religious education, family supports, political empowerment, criminal justice, community organization, refugee resettlement, racial justice, and police-community relations.

The collection consists of four scrapbooks on the Rochester Socialist Sunday School, two on the Young People's Socialist League of Rochester, and one on the Rochester Labor Lyceum, kept between 1910 and 1919. Also included are a manuscript minutes book kept by the Central Branch Socialists between 1910 and 1913, and a manuscript membership dues payment record for an unnamed Hungarian ethnic group between 1909 and 1913. The scrapbooks contain typescript and manuscript letters, printed material, ephemera, and photographs. The Rochester Socialist Sunday School scrapbooks contain an index and typescript history of the organization by Kendrick Shedd. It was Shedd who apparently kept the scrapbooks for the Sunday school. Letters from prominent socialists and reformers of the period, including Margaret Sanger, Scott Nearing, Charles Edward Russell, Theodore Debs, George Goler, Walter Rauschenbusch, Jim Larkin, Algernon Lee, Florence Cross Kitchelt, and Emma Goldman, are in the latter scrapbooks and the Labor Lyceum scrapbook.

The collection, which consists of thirteen boxes and eleven scrapbooks, contains both information about the Smith College Club of Rochester and about Smith College. The first two boxes house the Club records and meeting minutes. Boxes three and four contain brochures and other information about each of the tours of houses that has been offered by the Smith College Club since 1950. In the fifth box information about Smith College itself can be found. The scrapbooks, begun in 1914, are filled with newspaper clippings about Club activities and with wedding and engagement notices of Smith alumnae.

The Northaven papers chronicle the history of the organization founded in 1895, from its early insistence upon moral reform and Christian purity to service founded upon modern tenets of social science, practical assistance and advice. The papers, while incomplete, include correspondence, memoranda, budgets, annual reports, scrapbooks, and publicity material. Especially useful to the researcher will be the volumes in box two and an oversize volume containing the constitution, charter, and by-laws of the organization, secretary's minutes of staff and board meetings, and admittance, progress, and case histories of women during and after their stay in the home during the period 1898-1932.