The David E. Maas Papers are predominately composed of Maas’s teaching materials and student course materials from 1958 to 2010. Inclusively, the collection dates as far back as 1914. The collection is divided into five series: Teaching Materials, Biographical, Rev. L Aug. Heerboth and Dorothy A. Heerboth Papers, James M. Lower Papers, and General.

The majority of papers fall within the series Teaching Materials, which is further subdivided mainly by course subject and arranged roughly chronologically: Foreign Policy, American Constitutional History until 1860, American Constitutional History since 1860, Recent America, Methods of Historical Research, American Revolution Seminar, American Civilization 1492-1865, American Civilization 1865-Present, History 105 Practicum, History of Civilization, Civil War, Media, and General. Several folders contain materials detailing the history of Wheaton College. Types of teaching materials include: lectures, syllabi, course manuals, notes, exams, assignment sheets, essays and presentations, lesson plans, bibliographies, photocopies of primary source documents, oral histories, audiotapes, compact discs, and floppy discs. The subseries American Civilization 1492-1865, American Civilization 1865-Present, and Civil War contain a significant number of lengthy, typed lectures marked with dates. The subseries Media mostly contains recordings of music spanning from the 1700s through the 1970s. The final subseries, General, contains isolated folders on the courses Ethics and Race, Public History, and Freshman Experience. It also contains materials on an assessment of the History Department.

In addition to teaching materials, a small amount of Maas’s course materials as a college student are interspersed throughout the collection. These are found in the series Biographical and include lecture notes, essays, graded exams, syllabi, and autobiographical papers. Of special interest within the Teaching Materials and Biographical series may be the drafts of papers and presentations by Maas and the materials dedicated to the history of Wheaton and Wheaton College. Also of interest may be the audio materials in the subseries Media.

The collection also includes two smaller series of others’ papers. The first, the Rev. L. Aug. Heerboth and Dorothy A. Heerboth Papers, date from 1914 to 1976 and contain a few instances of correspondence and a significant number of what appear to be diary entries. The entries date from around 1914 to 1924. Second, the James M. Lower Papers date from the 1980s and include a transcription of the Civil War diaries of Sergt. W. J. Monfort along with photocopies of most, if not all, of the diaries’ pages.