The fonds is comprised of material gathered, collected and created by Ann Straus Gertler during her four decades as a peace advocate and activist.
Gertler acted as a distribution clearing house of sorts for information pertaining to disarmament activities in North America and Europe. The material is mainly comprised of literature and ephemera collected and gathered, which she would redistribute to those she thought interested in the activities of like-minded groups, or interested in knowing what was being discussed by various policy makers. For a number of years she issued the Ann Gertler Report which would synthesize this information for groups such as Voice of Women (V.O.W.), Project Ploughshares, and the Group of 78. The majority of this material is in the subject files series.
Ann Gertler was also a active member of a variety of organizations such as United Nations non-governmental organizations observer group, V.O.W., Group of 78, Canadian Pugwash, Project Ploughshares, the Consultative Group to the UN Ambassador on Disarmament, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security (CIIPS), and the St Lawrence River Public Advisory Committee. Each of these organizations are represented with series in the fonds.
Also included in the fonds are the yearly notebooks, calendars and correspondence that Gertler maintained reflecting her activities, thoughts and interests at a myriad of meetings she attended or observed. This material along with her educational materials from Columbia and other collected biographical information constitutes the Personal series.
