The papers of the Wood Products Research and Development Department span the years 1951 to 1984, with the bulk of the material covering the years 1965 to 1981.

The material includes several correspondence files, both general and project related; research files containing results of tests and experiments; several different report files including project reports and reports of research done by the WSU College of Engineering; laboratory notebooks maintained by the PFI research staff; a collection of photographs, slides, and negatives which complement the research and correspondence files; and Information Center records such as procedure manuals, accession lists, correspondence, minutes of meetings, and bound volumes of product information.

Note that many of the reports listed in the UNITERM index are no longer included in the collection. Because of the arrangement, research on any one project requires consulting several series. In addition to this collection the University of Idaho Special Collections has several other manuscript groups relating to the Potlatch Corporation and its predecessors.