These records comprise correspondence, financial records, documents, photographs, publicity items, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, and ephemera covering the first forty years of Boston College's Humanities Lecture Series, related lecture series, and events. The materials also documents Director Francis W. Sweeney, SJ's life-long relationship with many prominent writers, theologians, and academics of the twentieth century.

The bulk of the records are composed of correspondence. The correspondence in Series I, Subseries A. includes literary agents, lecture circuit organizations, newspapers, and funding sources, as well as general correspondence related to the routine operations of the Humanities Series and related lecture series. Notable correspondents include Elizabeth Kray, from the Poetry Center and the Academy of American Poets (an important source of lecturers for the Humanities), the New England Poetry Circuit (which provided many speakers for the Younger Poets Series) and John Lowell of the Lowell Institution (a nonprofit organization which began funding the Humanities Series in the late 1980s). The subseries also contains significant correspondence relating to funding and operations of the Stylus and David Steinman Visiting Poets Lecture Series prior to the inauguration of the Humanities Series in 1958. Series VI. Lecturers contains Sweeney’s correspondence with individuals who participated in or were approached to participate in the Humanities Series and the related lecture series. This series also includes posters, promotional items, newspaper clippings, and articles written by Sweeney about individual lecturers, and for scholars for whom he managed lecture tours. These include the tours of theologian Hans Küng and Martin Cyril D'Arcy, SJ. Of particular note among this ephemera are two signed copies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's broadside “Populist Manifesto for Poets with Love” and original artwork by Gregory Corso and Andre Girard.

These records also contains photographs of lecturers and artists who participated in the events administered by Sweeney. There are both publicity images and images taken on-site during lectures or events. Of particular note are images of poet Robert Frost.