The Mark S.W. Jefferson papers contain information regarding the personal and professional life of Geography Professor at the Michigan State Normal College Mark S.W. Jefferson. Jefferson was the head of the geography department at Michigan State Normal College from 1901 until his retirement in 1939. ; Monographs and articles written and collected by Jefferson; Journals and Notebooks created during research trips that span his entire career; a comprehensive collection of both incoming and outgoing personal and professional correspondence; Research and hand drawn maps; and an extensive collection of visual materials that includes over 6,000 teaching slides, stereograph cards and negatives, photographs and albums that document his travels around the world. Records in the collection date from 1875 to 1949.

The collection is arranged into seven series: American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Correspondence, Journals and Notebooks, Maps, Publications, Personal and Visual Materials.

The first series American Commission to Negotiate Peace includes the journal Jefferson kept during his time in Paris as well as a transcript created by Geoffrey J. Martin, and publications collected for research. Many of the publications are in French. Jefferson served as the lead Geographer on the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, a research group led by Col. Edward M. House at the request of President Woodrow Wilson in the autumn of 1917 to investigate geographical, ethnological, economic, historic, and political problems of Europe in preparation for the anticipated peace conference.

The Correspondence series includes personal correspondence with family members, in particular his first and second wife and his daughter; as well as professional correspondence which is arranged by incoming and outgoing correspondence. Jefferson kept carbon copies of most professional outgoing correspondence which is included in this series.

The Journals and Notebooks series includes class materials, field notes, diaries, and ledgers. Some are organized by type and others by type and location of research. Research documented in this series includes Jefferson's work in Latin American, Europe, and on Tidal Research, and Population Density. This series is complimented by the Maps and Publications series.

Records related to his personal life and service outside of the Michigan State Normal Collection are in the Personal Life, Service and Teaching series. Materials in the Personal Life series includes ledgers which in some cases are a daily account of personal and professional expences. While there is some materials in the Associations subseries related to the Association of American Geographers, there is little in there about Jefferson's role in founding the organization. Additionally, given the tenure that Jefferson had in the classroom, there is little to document his courses aside from the extensive photographic collection that he used in the classroom. There are no known scripts or notes to accompany these slides.

The most extensive series in the collection are the Visual Materials which is organized by format and includes subseries for Negatives, Photographs, Scrapbooks and Albums, Slides, Stereographs, and Indicies. In most instances, the materials are arranged by geographic regions, states and cities; cultural landscape phenomena like population density and transportation infrasctructure; and natural phenomena like earthquakes, wind erosion, etc.

The highlights of the collection are the Correspondence, Personal Diaries and Visual Materials series which are the most extensive in documenting Jefferson and his personal and professional life. Given the reach of Jefferson's influence on the field of geography and his experimental, for the time, method of teaching the collection is an excellent example of early 20th century higher education.