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Collection spans 1840-1986 and includes newspaper and magazine clippings and tear sheets, catalogs, ephemera, memorabilia, and other printed material primarily from the U.S., Great Britain, and France. Advertisements represent products and services from a wide range of categories including alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, businesses, cosmetics and other health and beauty products, fashion (including clothing, jewelry and watches), food, hotels and other tourist and travel destinations, household products, movies and theater events, tobacco products (primarily cigarettes) and transportation (airlines, automobiles, buses, cruise lines, trains, tires and other automotive accessories). The bulk of materials are in English, but French, Greek, and Spanish-language items are also present. Companies represented include Ford, Packard, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Coca Cola, TWA, Henri Bendel, Goodyear, and DeBeers. Non-advertising related materials include sheet music from the vaudeville, ragtime, and minstrel era; World War I; and depictions of African Americans, Native American, and other ethnicities in advertisements and print media. Acquired as part of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History.

When ALFA disbanded in 1994, the archival collections and the bulk of the periodicals collection were transferred to Duke's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The book collection and the remaining periodicals stayed in Atlanta, with books relating to feminist theory going to Emory University and the rest to a community library. The ALFA Archives and Periodicals Collections that have been transferred to Duke are an incredibly rich source of information about feminist and lesbian activism and communities, especially in the Southeast, from the early 1970s to the present.

The ALFA Archives include the organizational records of ALFA as well as other southern radical women's groups. This addition to the ALFA Archives, transferred to the Duke David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library in May, 1998, documents the financial operations of ALFA as well as providing information about the fund raising endeavors of the organization. The banking records, legal papers, and minutes from finance committee meetings provide documentation of the struggles of the organization to remain financially viable and to raise money in support of various women's issues. The financial and legal records relating to the property owned by ALFA serve to document the organization's attempt to provide a physical center around which Atlanta's lesbians and feminists could congregate and develop a mutually supportive community. This addition has not been processed but is open for use.

The collection consists of 104 original piano compositions entered into a contest held by the Society. It received over 3000 entries from all over Europe, and North and South America. These entries were apparently intended for return to the contestants, but were never mailed. The compositions were divided into three classes: Class A for concert piano solos, intended for public performance by advanced musicians; Classes B and C were written as less demanding salon pieces; Class C especially for short character pieces. Composers were supposed to identify themselves by motto rather than by name on their compositions (though some used names). The range of mottoes selected is quite diverse and interesting.

Newsletters, executive meeting minutes, directories, correspondence, election information, meeting critiques, and other printed matter document the activities of the Appalachian Society of American Foresters between 1921-1994. Records found in the collection include position descriptions, committee charters, by-laws, and copies of the organization's journal, Trail Blazer. There is also a report on the recovery from Hurricane Hugo (1989).