This collection includes correspondence, lecture notes, typescripts and reprints of Edmund D. McGarry's speeches and articles, newspaper clippings, publications of the National Association of Teachers of Marketing and Advertising (NATMA), and printed materials concerning marketing and business research.

Materials from McGarry's career before coming to the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1927 include lecture notes from courses in business administration (West Virginia University, 1914, and Columbia University, 1927), publications and newspaper clippings concerning McGarry's work with the Extension Committee of West Virginia University in the 1920s, and correspondence relating to his dissertation. The bulk of the papers date from ca. 1930 to 1955 and document McGarry's career at the State University of New York at Buffalo. They include lecture notes, correspondence, speeches and committee papers.

Materials of particular interest for the State University of New York at Buffalo include a file on communism that contains documents relating to the University's policy on communists and ex-communists on the faculty as well as testimony before investigating bodies in 1953. McGarry was a member of an ad hoc committee appointed by University of Buffalo Chancellor T.R. McConnell in March 1953 to formulate the University's policy. This ad hoc committee drafted a policy statement which was discussed by the Faculty Advisory Committee in March and April, and submitted to the University Council's Committee on General Administration on April 13. The policy was announced to the faculty by Chancellor McConnell in a statement dated May 8, 1953. Additional materials of historic interest include speeches on the history of the School of Business Administration and a memoir of his co-worker in the School of Business Administration and the Bureau of Business and Social Research, Robert Riegel (1890-1970).

McGarry's research in marketing, particularly in the problems of small retail and chain stores, can be found in VI: Marketing, Retailing in Chain Stores, including files on Buffalo, New York firms such as the S.M. Flickinger Company and the Larkin Soap Company.

Professional affiliations are documented by correspondence and printed items from the National Association of Teachers of Marketing and Advertising (NATMA) and related organizations. The papers also include a typescript draft of an unpublished book, How we get along: a sketch of economics, as well as typescripts and reprints of published articles. McGarry's speeches cover a variety of topics in addition to marketing, including his experiences in Great Britain during World War I when he was suspected of being an Irish terrorist, his trips to Africa in the 1960s, and fishing.