The collection comprehensively covers the career of Turk Murphy and was assembled primarily by Jim Goggin and other members of the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation. Similar sub-collections of materials about other traditional jazz musicians were added to this core collection containing items related to Murphy, Lu Watters, and Murphy’s side men, such as William Miskell and Bob Helm, some of whom also had their own bands. The collection includes over 650 manuscript jazz arrangements (scores and parts) for the Turk Murphy band, musical arrangements by Lu Watters, and related groups; original transcription discs of unique sound and video recordings by Turk Murphy, Lu Watters, Kid Ory, and other musicians and bands; 218 loose leaf notebooks of materials compiled by Jim Goggin documenting the careers of Turk Murphy, Burt Bales, Clancy Hayes, Bob Scobey and similar jazz musicians; hundreds of recordings in various formats, including lacquer transcription discs, open reel tapes, audio cassettes, CDs, CD-Roms, and videocassettes; thousands of photographs documenting the career of Turk Murphy and other West Coast traditional jazz musicians; correspondence and business records of Murphy and his jazz club, Earthquake McGoon’s; and numerous boxes of ephemera, posters, and realia relating to Earthquake McGoon’s and Turk Murphy’s performances there. In total the collection consists of about 300 linear feet of materials comprised of 155 linear feet of archival materials and 145 linear feet of sound recordings.

The collection contains correspondence, diaries, photographs, artwork, audiovisual material, and ephemera documenting the Stuart and Hummel families' life and work in China as Methodist missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also contains materials relating to R. Stuart Hummel's work as a cryptographer for the Navy and his work for the U.S. government in the Office of Chinese Affairs and the Office of Civil Defense.

The Memorial Library of Music is a collection of printed and manuscript scores and composers' letters, dating primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries, but ranging into both the 17th and 20th centuries. Musical genres range from intimate piano works and country dance music to large-scale orchestral and vocal works, with a strong emphasis on opera. Many of the scores are autographs or inscribed by the composer. The original collection was created by George T. Keating and conceived as part of Stanford University's memorial to alumni who gave their lives in World War II. The Music Library actively adds works to the collection, particularly 18th and 19th century operatic works. A guide to the initial collection was completed by Nathan van Patten, professor of bibliography in 1950, and has been heavily annotated over the years. A partial online version is also available. Newer additions are cataloged separately and appear in Stanford's online catalog. Adminstrative files for the collection are available in a separate online collection.

Materials consist of digitized copies of items held by private collection Robert S. Cohn, including correspondence, photographs, signed documents and other materials from famous authors, scientists, inventors, and more.
Materials consist of digitized copies of items held by private collection Robert S. Cohn, including correspondence, photographs, signed documents and other materials from famous authors, scientists, inventors, and more.

Included are 34 diplomatic documents from Italy (predominantly), France, Spain, England, and Czechoslovakia. Of particular note is an 1772 Papal indulgence from Olomouc, in the Czech Republic, and a 1781 letter addressed by Pope Pius VI to Scipione de' Ricci, bishop of Pistoia-Prato, in reply to the bishop's complaint about two nuns of the Monastery of Santa Caterina who are on the road to perdition and whose heresies and misdeeds border on the incredible.