Shimkin's work during his twenty year tenure at UCSD is well represented in this collection. However, documentation is less complete for the years after 1982. Probably the most substantial gap is the lack of materials from the 1950s, when Shimkin was directing research in the Laboratory of Experimental Oncology housed in the Laguna Honda Home near San Francisco. Each group of materials has been arranged in chronological order. Additional autobiographical writings can be found within the Collected Reprints.
General correspondence contains formerly unfoldered or miscellaneous letters.
Note that these files are not the sole location of correspondence. Undated or unidentified correspondence precedes dated material in the folders. Photographs accompanying letters remain with the correspondence. These files, which have been left in their original alphabetical and reverse chronological arrangement, contain related correspondence, memos, reports, articles, and newsletters. These files also contain correspondence on the subject of human experimentation, as well as letters to and from Senators Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey during 1973.