The Mark F. Boyd Collection contains materials relating to Florida and United States history as well as to natural history and medicine. The collection, arranged in six series, includes maps, newspapers, prints, photographs, pamphlets, original documents, copies of historical documents, reprints of articles and other materials.
The J. Carlton Barnette Papers include two book-length manuscripts, two notebooks with research material, five short manuscripts with accompanying photographs, the contents of a photo album, and various other loose photographs, all related to Peru. The photographs in the manuscripts and those found loose in the collection are appendixed at the end. Those photographs in the photo album were not appendixed due to their organization in the album.
The Florida Photograph Collection contains a series of photographs and negatives depicting the state from 1886 to 1950. The content of these includes people, scenery, nature, infrastructure, historic areas and landmarks, housing, commerce, tourism, and aerial views. Cities photographed include, but are not limited to, Miami, Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, St. Augustine, Key West, Coral Gables. Also of particular notice are photographs of Seminole Indians and villages, and historic photographs by Ed Romer from the 1940s of lower income African-American housing from the Sign Company and Gulf State Properties, Inc. in Overtown (Miami).
The E. G. Barnhill Collection contains negatives of Florida homes and birds, as well as glass plate negatives of Florida scenes. The collection also contains hand-colored postcards by Barnhill depicting Florida scenes (ca. 1910s-1930s), early Florida ephemera, several biographical pages and scrapbooks put together by Barnhill with many resourceful historical clippings from the early half of the 20th century on pirates, Native Americans, archaeological exploits, early technology, and treasure hunting.