Arranged into three subseries: City Planning Commission Annual Reports, 1966-1981, Urban Planning Grants, 1965-1966, and Miscellaneous Reports, 1946-1992. Arranged chronologically within each series.

Arranged into two subseries: City Planning, 1960-2012, and Harrisonburg History, 1958-2008. Arranged chronologically within each series.

Arranged Chronologically. Materials in the Personal Papers series document Sullivan's professional activities as well as his time as an instructor in the Political Science Department at James Madison University. Please note that the folder titled "JMU Classes - Evaluations," do not contain student grades or performance evaluations, but rather contain evaluations completed by students about Sullivan's performance as an instructor. For details of Sullivan's life and career highlights please see the folder titled "Background Information Robert J. Sullivan Jr., August 1998."

Arranged Chronologically. The Scrapbooks and Newspaper series consists of newspaper clippings collected by Sullivan, either loose in folders, or pasted into scrapbook pages, that document city planning activities primarily in Harrisonburg, VA. Most newspaper clippings come from the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record. In addition to clippings that document city planning efforts, Sullivan also collected clippings that relate to historical aspects of Harrisonburg, particularly those that feature images of Harrisonburg from the past. The folder titled "Old Times" : News and photos from the Daily News-Record contains a copy of the front page of the Daily News-Record from 1945 that reports on the ending of World War II. Please note that the scrapbooks in box 5, folders 4-7 are photocopies of the original scrapbooks. The original scrapbooks suffered from mold damage and were not retained.

The maps series contains maps produced or used by the Harrisonburg Housing and Redevelopment Authority that document homes and businesses in areas of Harrisonburg slated for demolition through urban renewal initiatives. Other city planning maps include hand-drawn maps created by Sullivan that show the growth of Harrisonburg over time and through annexation, as well as miscellaneous maps of Harrrisonburg and Rockingham County collected from various sources. Map identifier is located on the back of each item in the bottom right corner.

This series comprises photographic prints and slides created or collected by Sullivan that primarily document neighborhoods, buildings, and other locations in and around Harrisonburg, Virginia from circa 1930 to 2006. Images document the areas of Harrisonburg targeted for urban renewal in the 1960s, street widening and other planning commission projects, as well as buildings and other features of downtown Harrisonburg from the 1960s-early 2000s. Images in this series were taken and used by Sullivan both in his professional capacity as City Planning Director, as well as for personal use. Other content found among this series includes images of Harrisonburg High School football games in the early 2000s as well as images of JMU students in classes taught by Sullivan and on walking tours conducted as part of his courses from 1990-2006. Items identified as photo albums in the inventory were removed from their original albums and foldered individually with corresponding captions as folder titles.

All slides have been digitized and are available within JMU Scholarly Commons (https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/rjs/). Slides are arranged topically from the original arrangement created by Sullivan, and are listed alphabetically. Descriptive titles for the topical groupings listed in the inventory were transcribed from Sullivan's own description, written onto slide reel boxes. Additionally, Sullivan wrote item level image description onto most slides in the collection. That descriptive information is listed as the image title when viewing the images within JMU Scholarly Commons.

Most slide images document Harrisonburg and the surrounding area from the 1960s-1980s. Other content includes images of Reston, VA, and Durham, NC that feature housing complexes and downtown areas. Note that images of Harrisonburg are found within the grouping labeled as "Durham, NC," as well as in the grouping titled "non-H'burg."