The AHA organizational records document the association's history and its development of programs to stimulate scholarly historical research and publication. Records include discussion of the association's boards and commissions including the Commission on the Social Studies, Committee on Women Historians, Historical Service Board, and Public Archives Commission; relations with various professional associations including the American Council of Learned Societies, American Economic Association, American Political Science Association, Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and Society of American Archivists; establishment of the American Historical Review and its relations with Macmillan Company; encouragement of various writing projects such as the Dictionary of American Biography, Guide to Historical Literature, and Writings on American History; archival activities at the state and federal level such as training of archivists and museum curators, publication of guides to archival resources, and cooperation in various government publications. Among the many notable historians represented in the collection include Herbert B. Adams, George Bancroft, Charles A. Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Samuel Flagg Bemis, Solon J. Buck, Worthington Chauncey Ford, Lewis Hanke, Albert Bushnell Hart, J. Franklin Jameson, Waldo Gifford Leland, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, David H. Pinkney, Arthur M. Schlesinger (1888-1965), Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Frederick Jackson Turner, and Gordon Wright.

This Joint Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council was established in November 1929 for the purpose of fostering the acquisition, identification, and preservation of source materials. The collection consists of correspondence, minutes and agenda of meetings, and papers relating to the committee's surveys of materials for research. It includes information on library and archives projects, permanence of paper stock, union catalogs, offset reproductions, microreproductions, other duplicating techniques, sound reproduction, and copyright.

The records offer a comprehensive record of the organization, a federation of scholarly organizations specializing in fellowships and grants to promote the study of the humanities and social sciences. Founded in 1919 to represent the United States in the Union académique internationale (UAI). The collection includes records of presidents and vice presidents and document major publication projects including the Dictionary of American Biography.

Collected for use in publication projects of the Carnegie Institution of Washington including the Descriptive Catalogue of the Documents Relating to the History of the United States in the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba Deposited in the Archivo General de Indias at Seville (1916), and Instructions to the British Ministers to the United States, 1791-1812 (1941). The collection consists chiefly of transcriptions and copies of documents in foreign archives and personal collections relating primarily to the history of the United States, especially the early Spanish period, and to British ministers to the U.S. from 1791 to 1812. Subjects include European treaties; Yucatan, Mexico; John C. Calhoun; and John White. The collection also includes notes of Carnegie Institution members Francis S. Philbrick and Reuben Gold Thwaites.