The records include in-coming and out-going correspondence, official reports and proposals, and ephemera. The correspondence related to the WPA's activities at New Orleans Public Library originated with NOPL (primarily letters and reports from City Librarian John Hall Jacobs to WPA officials and others and in-coming correspondence from the WPA to Jacobs); these records actually belong with the records of NOPL but have remained with this collection.

Also included are minutes of the Advisory Committee formed in 1941 to make recommendations about which WPA programs should be continued as part of the war effort or discontinued; the committee also recommended how programs could be modified in order to contribute to national defense.