The vast majority of material in the library has been catalogued for open access, except in the CNS, which restricts in-person use of its archival and/or rare collection to a reading room. It is unusual to refuse interlibrary loan requests for materials located in any section of the library. MUN's QEII Library provides support for Canada's only English-language PhD level program in folklore. The library's commitment to this program has resulted in a collection of over 30, 000 monographs, with 150 journals directly focused on folklore/life and another 500 journals with relevant material.

The Archives comprises extensive collections of Newfoundland and Labrador folksongs and music, folk narratives of many kinds, oral history, folk customs, beliefs and practices, childlore, and descriptions of material culture. It has special collections of Newfoundland vocabulary, proverbs and riddles, and houses materials for a projected linguistic atlas of the province.

They is also quite a collection of Newspapers from all over the world and Canada in the basement section of the Library. One must visit there to appreciate the vast amount of media data that they have there for research purposes.