The doctoral research notes and other working papers of Professor Edward Frederick Denis Roberts. They include typescript transcriptions, early 1950s, of the registers of the later mediaeval archbishops of Armagh (1361-1543), prepared by Roberts and William George Henry Quigley for their joint doctoral thesis presented to the Queen's University, Belfast, 1955, with typescript copy of the same.

The collection also includes research and editorial notes, galley proofs and related correspondence which went to form their joint subsequent publication of that thesis as 'Registrum Iohannis Mey: The Register of John Mey, Archbishop of Armagh, 1443-1456' (Belfast: HMSO, 1972).

The collection also includes another copy of Roberts's Edinburgh University dissertation, 1959, on two mediaeval manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland's collection: 'Two Twelfth-Century manuscripts [ie MSS. 6121-6122] in the National Library of Scotland, Analysis and Problems'.

The register of John Mey is but one of a series of seven volumes in Armagh Public Library. The remaining registers, about which Roberts and Quigley produced research notes, concern the primacies of (1) Milo Sweteman, 1361-1380 (2) Nicholas Fleming, 1404-16 (3) John Swayne, 1418-1439 (4) John Prene, 1439-1443 (5) John Mey, 1443-1456 (6) Octavian de Palatio, 1478-1513 (7) George Cromer, 1521-1543.

The collection also includes personal, and quasi-personal papers – parts of which were restricted until 2021 – of Professor Roberts: (1) postcards principally of Roberts to his wife and family (2) official correspondence, invitations etc. from his time as Secretary of the National Library of Scotland, Librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, and Librarian of the National Library of Scotland (3) letters sent by staff of the National Library of Scotland during his illness of 1986 and final illness of late 1989 until his death in February 1990.