The collection was originally housed in several filing cabinets in and near Miwa Kai's office space in Kent Hall, which she shared with Wm. Theodore de Bary. Kai kept well-organized files, and most of her original file names have been retained. In addition to the papers she collected and created through the course of her work and personal life, she also inherited papers created by Howard P. Linton and Ryusaku Tsunoda, which she incorporated into her own files and enhanced with supplementary material and her own hand-written notes.

The collection consists of published works and writings, including drafts, articles and reprints, drafts for "Halls of the Ancestors", field notes and research, lectures, papers presented and miscellaneous reports as well as correspondence and reports from his travels.

Over the course of fifty years, the former documentary filmmaker Makino Mamoru (1930-) developed an extensive collection on the history of East Asian film, which covers the history of Japanese cinema spanning over a hundred years. The collection as a whole contains approximately 80,000 items, and focuses on print materials. The materials cover various film events and festivals across multiple genres of films: experimental films, educational films, documentary films, news films, amateur films, and animated films, among many others. The collection contains books, correspondences, handbills, magazines, manuscripts, newspapers, notes, photographs, postcards, posters, scripts/scenarios, slides, glass plate negatives, video cassettes, and other printed materials.

The Tharchin Collection consists primarily of correspondence, publications and drafts, photographs, daybooks and financial accounts, and autobiographical materials. The geographic coverage of the collection spans both sides of the Himalayas, in particular, the activities of intellectuals, officials, missionaries, and other historical figures in India, Sikkim, and Tibet.