Approximately 10,000 cataloging records were entered into the OCLC database. The Union conducted its mammoth publishing operation from its beginnings in 1824 through the nineteenth century, and less actively into the twentieth century. The Union attempted to meet all the reading needs of the American child, and published texts on a wide range of subjects including history, geography, biography, natural and physical sciences, poetry, and religion, as well as fiction. The Free Library's collection consists of file copies retained by the Union's Committee of Publications, which the Union gave to the Free Library in 1962. In cataloging the collection, apparent duplicates repeatedly turned out to be interesting variants, differing in the publisher's advertisements on the covers or other incidentals.
Many copies have editorial changes marked in blue pencil.
These collections, little known in the scholarly world, were chosen for conversion because of their uniqueness and research value. In the PYM Meeting for Sufferings records is documentation of the punitive actions against Quakers for their noncompliance with various militia laws and taxes, especially during and after the Revolutionary War. The records of Friends School, Haverford, reveal changes of teaching methods over the course of 100 years which will help illuminate Friends' educational philosophy. In the Jones family papers are the letters of 19th-century traveling Quaker ministers Eli and Sybil Jones. Among them are those from Sybil Jones from Washington, D.C. during the Civil War when she ministered to wounded soldiers and visited with Mary Todd Lincoln after the President's assassination.