The papers of Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946) span the years 1836 to 1947, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1907 to 1944. The collection is organized as Personal Papers and a Woodrow Wilson File. The Personal Papers consist of diaries and notebooks, a correspondence file including letters between Edith Bolling Galt Wilson and Baker relating to Baker's biography of Woodrow Wilson, his role in the Paris Peace Conference, speeches and writings, and miscellany containing personal and professional material, some of it pertaining to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and Baker's part in the making of the motion picture "Woodrow Wilson."

The Personal Papers document Baker's life as a boy, a college student, a young newspaper man, and a magazine editor. There are many exchanges with members of his family, especially with his father, Joseph Stannard Baker. This material later provided background information for Baker's autobiography.

Other correspondence treats Baker's work on the and and documents his emergence as a Progressive. Correspondence after 1920, which is considerably more extensive than that covering his years as a journalist and presidential assistant, note his work on the Wilson biography and his collaboration with the president's widow, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

The speeches and writings file in the Personal Papers series contains copies of Baker's works and research material for , an examination of African Americans after the turn of the century; typescript drafts of , to which Baker contributed; and examinations of labor conditions and the development of industrialism. Files relate to his autobiographical writings and his studies of Wilson, and Baker's scrapbooks contain pieces for the assist in identifying Baker's early unsigned works. Although much of the material relating to work written under his pen name, David Grayson, is located at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, similar material is included in this collection. A bibliography of his works by his daughter, Rachel Baker Napier, accompanies the Library's collection.

The Woodrow Wilson File consists of correspondence and other material assembled by Baker during the fifteen years he devoted to his biography of Wilson. A subseries of correspondence includes originals, transcripts, and photocopies of letters written to or by Wilson, transcripts of his letters to his first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, and Baker's correspondence relating to Wilson as well as memoranda of interviews and printed matter. Other correspondents include Jane Addams, Albert A. Boyden, Frank Nelson Doubleday, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ernst H. P. A. Haeckel, Norman Hapgood, Ben B. Lindsey, Samual S. McClure, George Foster Peabody, John S. Phillips, Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Booker T. Washington, and William Allan White. Chronological notes on Wilson's day-to-day writings and activities prepared by Baker's assistant, Katharine E. Brand, complete the series.