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Among the many extraordinary books in the collections of printed materials are first editions of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, a presentation copy of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, the elephant folio of Audubon's Birds of North America (for which the A.P.S. was an original subscriber), as well as a majority of Benjamin Franklin imprints and a significant portion of Franklin's personal library.

The Library's manuscript collections include a vast range of materials covering such topics as eighteenth-century natural history, American Indian linguistics and culture, nuclear physics, computer development, and medical science.

The Library is among the premier institutions in the nation for documenting the history of genetics and eugenics, the study of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, quantum mechanics, and the development of cultural anthropology in America.