This series focuses on biographical information about Mary van Kleeck and includes the following subseries about her life: Personal history, Education, Daily activities, and material gathered from the federal government through a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request. Photographs include prints, proofs, uncut rolls of negatives and glass slides taken by Mary van Kleeck as well as many pictures of van Kleeck and her family taken by others. The subseries, Daily activities, includes a list of her activities between 1930 and 1931, written on notecards as well as more traditional diary-like entries of her time with the College Settlement Association in 1905 and of her six weeks in the Soviet Union in 1932. The subseries, Education, includes material from her time at Smith and her relationship with the institution as an alumna, as well as class notes from other schools that she attended. Articles and newspaper clippings are found within this series, as are Papers, theses, and dissertations. Biographical information about her Family and friends is a subseries as well. The subseries Related collections include photocopies from other collections, most of which were compiled by Guy Alchon in his research on Mary van Kleeck. Permission to use copies of materials from other institutions must be sought from those institutions.

Family, Friends and associates, and the Sophia Smith Collection form the three subseries within this series. Correspondence may also include obituaries, newspaper clippings, photographs, memos, etc. There are many letters from her mother, Eliza Mayer van Kleeck in the Family subseries. The Friends and associates subseries contains the bulk of the material in this series. People with whom Mary van Kleeck exchanged significant correspondence and well-known individuals have their own folders, arranged alphabetically by last name and chronologically within each folder. Other individuals are included within the general correspondence for each letter of the alphabet. The general correspondence is also alphabetical by last name. Individuals' organizational affiliations are sometimes noted. In addition, correspondence is scattered throughout the collection. Especially significant amounts are in the organization files of the American Association of University Women, American Association of Social Workers, Hospites, International Industrial Relations Institute, National Research Council, National Women's Trade Union, and the U.S. Department of Labor. There is also correspondence with friends from van Kleeck's childhood and college days.

The items in this series are divided into subseries denoting type of material and arranged chronologically within subseries. The bulk of the series is Articles and notes or typescripts of Speeches that Mary van Kleeck wrote and delivered throughout her career. Manuscripts and published versions of Speeches are filed together. The subseries includes conference papers, although occasionally a speech will be found within the files of the conference papers in SERIES V. ORGANIZATION AND CONFERENCE FILES rather than within this series, especially if grouped with other peoples' speeches from a particular conference. Recurring topics include women and employment, social and economic planning, employee representation, social reform, unemployment, the Soviet Union, race relations, trade and labor unions, and social security. Four series of lectures are gathered together in a separate subseries, Lectures, at the end of Speeches. Other subseries include Monographs, Radio broadcasts, Interviews, Hearings (mostly on economic issues), Books reviewed by Mary van Kleeck, Reviews of Mary van Kleeck's books, Speaking engagement programs, Research notes, and Invitations to speak and write. The series contains writings co-authored by van Kleeck; it does not contain works to which she contributed only the introduction. Drafts or typescripts of van Kleeck's portion are included here, however.

This series contains some of Mary van Kleeck's research files, as well as topics that interested her personally. Items are arranged alphabetically by topic and chronologically within each topic. Newspaper clippings are a large proportion of the items in this series. Significant amounts of material can be found on civil liberties, the coal industry, countries, labor, and World War I and World War II. Edward Wieck performed much of the research contained in the files on the coal industry. Material about a few individuals, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alfred E. Smith, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, are included in this series. Materials about groups of individuals, such as African Americans, Italian Americans, and child labor are also included. Labor newspapers from this series are filed with the oversize materials.

This series forms the bulk of the collection, and covers an extremely wide breadth of topics. Mary van Kleeck's personal level of involvement in organizations and conferences varied from intensely involved, as can be seen in the International Industrial Relations Institute files, to cursory, as is demonstrated by her materials on the American Management Association. Organizations and conferences are arranged in alphabetical order, and items are chronological within each folder. Most of the materials in publicity scrapbooks have been removed from their original binders, but are retained in their original order in folders. The Russell Sage Foundation is the most substantially documented organization in this series, and includes much of the research and many of the manuscripts produced by the Division of Industrial Studies during van Kleeck's forty-year career. Of special note are the materials on the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Dutchess Bleachery, the Filene Store, the Rock Island Arsenal, and the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company. One can trace the evolution of these studies, from the field notes of the researchers, to the correspondence between the organizations and the staff of the Russell Stage Foundation, to the drafts of the reports to the final published copies. The final published versions of the reports are located in SERIES III. WRITINGS AND SPEECHES or SERIES VI. BOOKS FROM MARY VAN KLEECK'S LIBRARY. Information about unions, health care plans, and work councils of specific institutions was generated by the Russell Sage Foundation's study of employee representation. Other organizations that are substantially well-documented include Hospites, a refugee relocation organization that provided employment and financial assistance for social workers fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s; the American Civil Liberties Union; United States Department of Labor; and the International Industrial Relations Institute (IRI). Mary van Kleeck kept detailed records of the conferences sponsored by the IRI. Significant amounts of correspondence can be found in the organization records of the National Research Council (with Edith Abbott and Robert Yerkes) and the National Women's Trade Union League (with Elizabeth Christman, Mabel Leslie, and Rose Schneiderman).

This series contains books written by authors other than Mary van Kleeck and is arranged in alphabetical order by author's last name. (If there is no author, then monograph is listed in alphabetical order by title.) Van Kleeck wrote the introductions for several of the books and others contain copies of speeches that she gave. Many of these monographs were printed by organizations with which van Kleeck was closely associated, such as the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Conference of Social Work, and the International Industrial Relations Institute.

This series contains materials audio and video footage [collected or produced by Guy Alchon for a documentary he planned to make.] The documentary was never completed. Most of the series is composed of audiotapes and videotapes of oral history interviews. There is also some archival footage of Mary van Kleeck, a documentary on Central Casting, and a sample of the documentary. Some of the interviews have transcripts in SERIES I. BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS-Interviews and Recollections. Some items need use copies made before they can be played and will require advanced notice.