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.