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The Frank Nelson Blanchard series provides insight into the personal and professional spheres of this noted herpetologist and instructor. Correspondence (arranged by date or correspondents' names) focuses largely on professional matters and the University of Michigan subseries documents Blanchard's role as a well-liked university professor. Publications contain additional information on his research and professional activities and the subseries also includes a list of Blanchard's works and manuscripts of various writings. The Personal/Miscellaneous subseries further reflects the active nature of Blanchard's mind; in addition to biographical materials, educational records, and obituaries, it contains notebooks of his observations on a variety of flora and fauna. Blanchard was also a conscientious diarist and the thirty-five volumes in the Diaries subseries offer a complete record of his daily activities from 1905 through his death in 1937. Finally, photographs and drawings depict Blanchard's family and friends as well as his research activities at the University of Michigan Biological Station and elsewhere in the United States. These visual materials are also indicative of Blanchard's close collaboration with his wife in that they include drawings of snakes made by Frieda Cobb Blanchard and photograph albums compiled by the two.