The Spencer Dudley Corlett collection consists primarily of bound copies of Corlett's three travel diaries chronicling four canoe trips Corlett took with his friends during his late teens and early twenties. The first diary describes his trip up the Ohio Canal in 1910 that he took with his friend Alfred Jenkins. The second diary describes Corlett's canoe trip through the Algonquin Provincial Park with his friend Harvey Mierke in 1912. The third diary diary details Corlett's and Mierke's two canoe trips in the Temagami region, one through Lady Evelyn Lake in 1913 and one through Lake Obabika in 1914. The diaries include Corlett's description of the trips illustrated with his photographs and drawings.

A small folder of biographical and background information can be found with this collection, which includes a biography of Spencer Corlett, correspondence of Spencer's daughter Jane Corlett Feick, which gives some background of the diaries and Corlett's travels, and a copy of a map of Old Tannery Acres (used for marketing material) in Hudson, Ohio, a residential development that Corlett helped develop.