The Middle East Collection currently concentrates on twentieth-century history, politics, economics, military affairs, political and social movements, communism and socialism, education as a factor in political and social change, and U.S. national security affairs. Materials from and about all the Arab countries of Western Asia and North Africa, Turkey, Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan are included.

The collection also has strong holdings, primarily in Arabic, of classical Islamic texts and of works on the history, literature, philosophy, and religion of classical or medieval Islam and of twentieth-century Arabic and Turkish literature. These portions of the collections, however, are no longer actively developed.