CRL holds approximately five million newspapers, journals, dissertations, archives, government publications, and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching.  Current acquisitions emphasize materials produced outside the United States, especially publications and archives from developing regions.  CRL's Area Microform Projects are important sources of this material.

Archives

Millions of pages of documents, primarily from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Archive of the United Kingdom, in addition to many special collections of archival and primary source material such as the 100,000-plus-page archive of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime.

Dissertations

800,000 doctoral dissertations (including those of Albert Einstein, Dag Hammarskjold, and other Nobel laureates) from universities outside the U.S. and Canada.  CRL acquired the majority of the collection through deposit from member libraries. CRL continues to acquire about 5,000 titles per year from major universities through demand purchase and deposit.

Government Documents

• Foreign government documents: several hundred thousand volumes of publications from the government agencies of more than 100 countries, including more than 1,750 official gazettes.
• U. S. State Documents: more than a half million volumes of deposited and purchased monographic and serial publications of the U. S. state governments, including financial reports and research studies through 1950. CRL also maintains a collection of legislative journals through 1990.

Monographs

More than 500,000 monographs in all formats and subject areas.

Newspapers

More than 10,000 titles from most countries of the world and every state in the U.S., including over 1,800 U.S. ethnic titles and some of the earliest African American newspapers.

Serials

66,500 serials, including a large collection of U.S. trade journals from the late 19th century through the mid-2oth century; journals on science, medicine, technology, agriculture, and textiles in South and South East Asia; and journals from the Russian Academy of Sciences.

 Collections based on type of material primarily acquired through deposit by member libraries include:

• College and University Catalogs
• Primary and Secondary Textbooks
• Railroad Publications
• Curriculum Guides
• Foreign Central Bank Publications