The collection was originally unsorted. Papers that were received in an envelope or folder have been retained in the state they were found, which may indicate how Professor Manley was working on them. In cataloguing the papers, however, an attempt was made to keep those relating to the same subject together, and regional groupings have been applied. Manley's aim was to relate events in one part of the country to those elsewhere in order to verify the synoptic situation of earlier times. As a result, there are frequent references to other areas in papers concerned primarily with a specific area. In some cases papers relating to two or more areas were found grouped together, and in these cases they have been left together.