The collection consists of correspondence, publications and papers of Robert Blair Wilkie (1913–1998) and his family. Robert Blair Wilkie was the curator of the Old Glasgow Museum 1965-1998 (formerly known as the People’s Palace Museum). Active member of the Scottish Nationalist movement (joined Scottish Nationalist Association under John MacCormick in 1937), in 1945 he was the SNP candidate in West Renfrewshire, and in the following year he was appointed editor of the Scots Independent (1944–1946), with Roland Eugene Muirhead. He established the Scottish Resistance Committee which provided the support for MacDiarmid's Independent candidature at Kelvingrove in the 1950 election in opposition to the Secretary of State, Walter Elliot. He was appointed Lecturer D'Anglais at the University of Clermont Ferrand in France (1949–1952). He was also a polymath, publishing poems, limericks, cartoons, plays, and wrote essays on Scottish history. Along with his close friends Molly Urquhart and Duncan Macrae he was involved in the Rutherglen Repertory and Curtain Theatres.

The collection contains papers relating to Robert Blair Wilkie’s cultural involvement in the development of Scottish Nationalism, spanning the late 1930s to his death in 1998.