Contains subject files and newsletters on countries kept by the Division of Pacific and Asian History: Cook Islands, Fiji, Gilbert and Ellis Island, Indonesia, Malaysia, Micronesia, New Caledonia, Papua/New Guinea, New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), New Zealand, Nauru, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tahiti. Includes research papers and notes, governmental papers, publications, newspaper clippings, school readers and Cook Islands photostats.

The collection consists of disaster and research reports, disaster preparedness workshop training manuals, seminar papers, consultancy management files, newspaper clippings, small publications and ephemera, a large number of SOPAC (Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission) and United Nations reports, and documents created when Joe Barr was engaged as a consultant in relation to disaster management in the Pacific Islands. Of particular significance are the photographs and slides taken immediately following disasters in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Cambodia, Turkey, Afghanistan, India and Indonesia.