Primary and secondary materials relating to Stanford University are collected by the University Archives from both campus and off-campus sources. Assistance, particularly regarding manuscript materials, is lent by Library bibligraphers and subject curators.

The University Archives collects papers of students, faculty, administrators, and staff, while the Special Collections manuscripts division collects papers of prominent alumni, unless those papers relate directly to Stanford activities. Materials relating to Herbert Hoover, Stanford alumnus and Board of Trustee member, are collected by the Hoover Institution Archives. Records of the Stanford Medical School are collected by the Medical History Center, although Medical School faculty papers are collected by the University Archives. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center maintains a separate archives, including records, collected under government mandated retention policies, and personal papers of SLAC scientists. The Graduate School of Business also maintains a separate archives of school records and faculty papers. The Stanford Law Library maintains a small archive of material related to the Law School, although Law School faculty papers are collected by the University Archives.

All materials relevant to Stanford University and the Stanford family are collected, regardless of treatment, format, or publication date. These can include history, biography, current information, fiction, drama, poetry, criticism, essays, bibliographies and reference works, statistical compilations, and reports.

Types of material and format include:

• Manuscripts and archival records of members of the Stanford faculty, administration, and staff;
• Archival records of schools, offices, centers, and student organizations;
• Digital files (e.g. email, computer files, websites, social media, research data, data sets);
• Photographs and negatives, slides, and other illustrative materials (e.g. drawings, etchings, watercolors);
• Maps and architectural drawings;
• Prints and posters;
• Reports, surveys, committee records and minutes;
• Technical reports;
• Lab notebooks;
• Dissertations and theses completed by Stanford graduates; honors theses by Undergraduates;
• Audio and video materials;
• Oral histories;
• Scrapbooks and albums;
• Monographs, monographic series;
• Journals and other serial publications;
• Select artifacts and ephemera (including brochures, leaflets, pamphlets)

Because we have full runs of the Stanford Quad and the Daily Palto Alto / Stanford Daily, we no longer collect these publications.

Likewise, due to their general availability, we no longer collect newspapers and popular journals published in the United States that contain coverage of Stanford University.