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Professional Activities: This series includes correspondence, meeting minutes, and reports and evaluations of professional organizations and activities in which Robinson was involved. The materials are arranged in alphabetical order by name of organization because Robinson was often involved at the same time in many organizations. There are no complete files of the many organizations with which Robinson was involved, but rather, Robinson kept materials which showed his involvement in these organizations. Most significant are the records of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Association (ARA). Robinson was president for the year 1956-1957, and was extremely active in the ARA throughout his career. He was instrumental in establishing the Arthritis and Rheumatism Association Journal; the founding of this journal caused a debate within the medical profession as other medical journals feared that the establishment of a journal devoted wholly to arthritis and rheumatism would not be a positive move for a variety of reasons. This debate generated a great deal of correspondence.

There is also material regarding Robinson's participation in conferences at which he lectured. Copies or outlines of these lectures are included as are articles written for the Encyclopedia Americana in 1957 and 1958, and two case studies of Robinson's arthritic and rheumatic patients that seem to have been especially important for Robinson's work.

General Materials: This series is comprised of ten subseries: awards and honors; biographical; general correspondence (1933-1989); licenses and certificates; Louis Harry Newburgh files; Dwight D. Eisenhower Library Oral History Project (1978); papers; photographs; and slides.

The biographical materials include an exhaustive curriculum vitae of William Dodd Robinson and a bibliography of all articles and papers he wrote.

The General Correspondence is arranged chronologically from 1933 to 1989. The correspondence as a whole is not consistent because Robinson divided his files according to subject and filed correspondence in several places. As a result there is often correspondence in both topical as well as in the correspondence files. This is also the reason there is a gap from 1958 to 1975 in the correspondence files. Researchers should look in the topical files for correspondence to these years.

The Louis Harry Newburgh files have been retained because Newburgh had an influence on Robinson's career, and Newburgh was quite prominent in the fields of arthritis and rheumatology. Robinson was involved in helping to write a biography of Newburgh after Newburgh's death; these materials were probably part of Robinson's research.

In 1978 the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library interviewed Robinson as part of their Oral History Project. A transcript of this interview is here as well as some correspondence. Robinson was asked to participate in this project as he was an individual whose career coincided with the Eisenhower Administration, and someone who had a definite impact on the field of nutrition, specifically metabolic diseases. This interview provides a rather detailed description of Robinson's career through Robinson's eyes.

The photographs are divided into departmental photographs, research and case study photographs, portraits, and personal photographs. Some are labelled. There are some slides that Robinson used for lectures and presentations.