Series I: National and Chapter Files, dated 1959 to 1986, contains printed material published by the organization nationally while based out of San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston, as well as materials created by local and regional chapters of SDS from throughout the United States. These files document the national and local activities of SDS, identifying the ideologies of the group and showing how chapters interpreted and deployed the national organization's strategic initiatives in local communities. There are fliers for regional conferences, meetings, film screenings, sit-ins, teach-ins and strikes, as well as for more well known events like the 1965 March on Washington against the war in Vietnam. As the SDS was affiliated with the League for Industrial Democracy in the early 1960s, files from this period hold memoranda and correspondence from the parent organization.

This series contains several files of pamphlets and publications that discuss the group's position on social and civic issues, including racial and socioeconomic inequality in the United States, and the influences of inequality on the Vietnam War draft. The authors are primarily past presidents, vice-presidents or executive secretaries. Pamphlets and publications are arranged first chronologically and then alphabetically based on either prominent subject or author.

In addition to the printed matter that was put out nationally, material, if identified, is organized under local chapter or region. There are files from Amherst College, Harvard/Radcliff, Columbia University, New York University, Brooklyn College, Queens College, Stanford University, Yale University and the Madison, Wisconsin Branch, as well as the New England and New York Regionals. The files show the wide range of issues that concerned campus chapters, such as racial injustice in the community; wage inequality and layoffs in large local employers; disputes over course offerings and university initiatives; and the overarching issues of the national organization, such as protesting the Vietnam War. Local and regional chapter files may also contain chapter histories and campus or community news clippings that contextualize the environment in which the chapter was formed and in which it operated. Meeting minutes and publications of individual committees illuminate how the local chapters were goverened. Circular letters and fliers produced by the chapters also document dissonance between local chapters and the national organization.

This series contains a few subject files with publications, pamphlets, fliers, and circular letters on major activities of SDS: anti-draft and anti-Vietnam War organizing, women's liberation and the organizations' joint civil rights work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Subject files provide a broad view of how SDS approached the core issues of its concern through both education and action. The splits that occurred within SDS at the 1969 National Convention in Chicago involving Progressive Labor and the Revolutionary Youth Movement II are documented in subject files.

Projects sponsored by or allied with SDS are documented in this series as well. These projects include Chicago JOIN, the Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP), the Liberal Study Group, the Peace Research and Education Project, and the Worker Student Alliance. These files contain source materials SDS assembled or created to provide the intellectual basis for project goals and actions: background papers, conference working papers, bibliographies, and reprinted articles, which were distributed for educational outreach and constituency building.

Series II: Radical Education Project Publications dates from 1963 to 1970 and consists of the pamphlets and publications distributed by the Radical Education Project, a sponsored project of the SDS. The Radical Education Project was created for internal education in the New Left movement as well as outreach to members of society at large, and its publications were intended to provide an intellectual support to the programs and theories of the movement. While many of the subjects mirror those covered in general SDS publications (such as women's liberation and draft resistance), the Radical Education Project Publications are broader in scope than SDS publications found in Series I, and were intended to be distrubuted to a larger audience than the SDS membership.

The pamphlets and publications are arranged by subject. This series also contains literature lists, circular letters and memoranda, reports and proposals and brief introductions to the Radical Education Project in the form of brochures and pamphlets. The pamphlets in this series are generally published out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but occasionally out of Detroit. This series contains one file of material from the Bay Area Radical Education Project, based out of San Francisco, CA.