This collection consists of 13 boxes of materials including ephemera (including programs, circulars, meeting agendas, paper abstracts, and field trip guides) and manuscripts from societies and meetings Traverse was involved with, correspondence, biographical materials, and photographs.

The collection is organized according to the date the materials were received. The collection was arranged into 4 series: societies and meetings; photographs; biographical materials; scientific correspondence. Series notes throughout the finding aid further describe the series content and provenance.

The group photographs and individual portraits that were donated with this collection have been incorporated into the HI Portrait Collection. Photocopies of the transferred photographs and any additional photographs can be found in the folders in series 1 and 2.