This collection is composed of correspondence, related enclosures, and printed materials, mainly from fine print presses and library-issued pressings. Printed materials include bookplates, broadside poems, exhibition programs, invitations, mass cards, pamphlets, and prayer booklets. The collection also includes a small number of audiocassettes, audiotape reels, photographs, and wood blocks used in printing that may have been used by Philip in instruction.

Mary McNiff corresponded with or collected items from a number of notable individuals, including artists Bernard Childs, Allan Rohan Crite, and Fritz Eichenberg; poets Sean O’Faolain, John Holmes, and Archibald MacLeish; Boston College Humanities Series participants Martin (M.C.) D’Arcy and Sir Alec Guinness; Rose Kennedy; and Robert F. Kennedy and his wife. Other correspondents include many clergy: Hildeleth Cumming of Stanbrook Abbey Press, Richard Cardinal Cushing, William J. Leonard, John Petit, Anselm Strittmatter, M. Madeleva Wolff, and John J. Cardinal Wright. Booklets from Humanities Series speaker Robert Frost are also included in correspondence.

Photographs include family pictures of Mary McNiff with son Brian; photographs of Father Thomas Gasson and of an unidentified priest; and vacation photographs taken by Yen-Tsai Feng.