A list was made around the time of the deposit, and may be found amongst the papers (JACK/14/2). It comprises 2 outlines of the contents arranged under various headings (primarily the names of members of the Jackson family), and a further item list which has been loosely cross-referenced with the others. When the collection was received at the Library, its physical arrangement seems to have reflected the order described in the outline lists. Reference codes were used when the papers were first listed, and have been added to the documents, but the codes on the documents and those on the lists (which use letters and numbers respectively) do not tally directly. The arrangement found in the outline lists has been preserved, although it has clearly been imposed upon the collection as a whole, and is unlikely to represent the order in which the papers were created or kept until a conscious effort was made to deal with them collectively as an archive.
Many of the papers are annotated in contemporary hands, but only in the case of the Robert Jackson papers can the original order be traced (see note for JACK/2/3/5). Within series, the arrangement of the papers has been left untouched unless there is an obvious anomaly, and as a result the order is not necessarily strictly chronological. The papers have been re- numbered, and the old codes retained in brackets on the documents.
The collection is arranged as follows:
- JACK/1 Genealogical papers
- JACK/2 Papers of Robert Jackson
- JACK/3 Papers of Charlotte Cosby, wife of R. Jackson
- JACK/4 Papers of Alexander Cosby Jackson
- JACK/5 Papers of Elizabeth Mitchell, wife of A.C. Jackson
- JACK/6 Papers of Charles Robert Mitchell Jackson
- JACK/7 Papers of Jane Armitage, wife of C.R.M. Jackson
- JACK/8 Papers of Charles William Leathley Jackson
- JACK/9 Papers of Lawrence Colville Jackson
- JACK/10 Papers of Nina Goss, wife of L.C. Jackson
- JACK/11 Papers of Francis Sydney Jackson
- JACK/12 Papers of Charles Bramwell Armitage Jackson
- JACK/13 Miscellaneous papers
- JACK/14 Documents relating to the Jackson papers