Pen Pal Clubs

The Collection has been divided into six series, which basically reflect the organizational pattern employed by Roth, in which the primary level of access in the folder title. His original folder headings have been in all cases retained. A short personal group (Series I) includes a small amount of personal correspondence, his "Calaph Timmerman" correspondence, and his initial dealings with the Cornell University Department of Manuscripts and Archives Human Sexuality Collection. Series II consists of Roth's subject files, which include files on individuals, corporations, service organizations, gay and human rights organizations, articles from magazines and newspapers, and material on the Fordham Law School alumni group, and the Cornell University Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association, and many other topics. These are presently organized as he kept them, non-alphabetically. As with the International files (Series III) groupings were made conceptually, or according to his personal understanding of the material. In addition to the many periodicals and publications, Series III includes correspondence with and letters from people around the world. Series IV consists of a legal file, concerned chiefly with landlord-tenant cases. Roth kept a separate AIDS file (Series V), of health publications and scientific findings. Series VI is a diverse collection of miscellaneous writings and printed material, which were perhaps intended to be interfiled in other parts of his collection.

In addition to the publications and correspondence, the collection includes two videos, erotic and pornographic material and catalogs which are distributed in different series, legal briefs and publications, photographs, and a selection of perfunctory solicitation mailings dealing mainly with gay and human rights organizations.

An index to the periodicals follows the box and folder listings, but does not always include the substantial number of titles within specific nation folders in Series III. The "France" and "Japan" folders particularly contain many publications.

Some American publications were removed from the collection and distributed into other parts of the Human Sexuality Collection. A list of these is available, as is a bibliography Roth compiled for the National Gay Archives and Library Microform Project, though it is not to be inferred that all these titles remained in the collection when it was acquired by the Human Sexuality Collection.