The index cards form an integral part of the research collection of Elaine Katz. They contain keywords, themes and names of people/authors, all of which are references to the large body of research material used by EK for her publications and academic work. Some of the index cards also contain excerpts of text passages from published works.

The Index cards were stored in certain groups in index card boxes, which were labelled. Within these groups the index cards were also labelled. The original order of this system has been retained and has been used for the archival description of the index cards. The content of each box has been divided in groups for the purpose of digitisation. The labels within each of these groups are listed accordingly, even when there are no index cards belonging to a certain label. Some of the terms used in the index are representative of the language and the discourse used at the time, e.g.. Natives, and have been retained for searching.

The collection contains the research working papers of Elaine Katz, which mainly relate to gold mining on the Witwatersrand, Silicosis in miners, Labour and South African politics, particularly in the Transvaal at the turn of the 20th century.