The Margaret Herrick Library collects a wide range of materials relating to motion pictures, including books, periodicals, scripts, photographs, posters and other publicity materials. The library also maintains extensive files of magazine and newspaper clippings organized by film titles, personal names, corporate names and general subjects (e.g., cinematography). The collection does not contain actual films or videotapes. While the library's collections are not available online, this online catalog provides a guide to some of the resources available at the library.

The catalog includes bibliographic records for the library's holdings of books, periodicals and scripts in the Core Collection, as well as part of the poster collection. The catalog does not at this time include listings of the clipping files, photographs or materials in Special Collections (manuscript and photographic). Information on these areas of the library's collection will be added to the catalog in the future. Scope and content notes for Special Collections can be found at www.oscars.org/mhl/sc/index_browse.html. Scope and content notes for photograph collections can be found at www.oscars.org/mhl/scp/index_browse.html.