Fonds consists of one painting by Peter Etril Snyder of the Dana Porter Library. The work was commissioned in 1975 for the home of the then President of the University, Burt Matthews.

Fonds consists of materials created and accumulate by Dana Porter during his personal and professional career, as well as materials collected posthumously and created and accumulated by his wife and children. Includes photographs, correspondence, research notes, essays and other writings, ephemera, scrapbooks and clippings.

Correspondence and notes between members of the Dumont Press, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist) (CPC M-L), and the Anti Imperial Alliance (AIA) of the University of Waterloo. The correspondence outlines a political disagreement between the left wing politics of those who worked at the press and the CPC M-L and AIA. The Dumont Press had been allowing the CPC M-L and the AIA to use the press to print their materials, but indicated that they had become uncomfortable with the division between the groups. Part of this disagreement was also what was happening with the Chevron, the student newspaper of the University of Waterloo, at the time. The Dumont Press printed the Chevron and indicated that they were finding it difficult to do their work under the political perspective of the AIA, which was the dominant voice of the Chevron at the time. Also present is one item of correspondence from Dr. Henry Crapo, professor in the Faculty of Mathematics, at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Crapo was requesting back the money that he had loaned the Dumont Press due to the press' political disagreements with the CPC M-L, the AIA and the Canada-China Friendship Society.