This collection consists predominantly of the research files used by Nancy Stoller in the writing of two books and a number of academic papers, and in teaching at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC). A high percentage of the collection is secondary source material including: newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly papers, documents (primarily minutes, publications, and other administrative or publicity materials) from a variety of community based, AIDS related organizations; a few posters; and a very extensive pamphlet collection. Primary documents include: drafts and published versions of papers written or co-written by Stoller, drafts of chapters and correspondence from Lessons from the Damned: Queers, Whores and Junkies Respond to AIDS, correspondence connected to Women Resisting AIDS: Feminist Strategies of Empowerment (1995), various handwritten notes, and two participant-observer notebooks from her time with ACT-UP New York. The collection also includes a small sampling of condoms and stickers, including some from Amsterdam, as well as dental dams and a leather harness for the dams. A small amount of material documenting some of her other research topics, as well as her later career at UCSC, can be found near the end of the collection. For material relating to Nancy Elaine Stoller (Nancy Stoller Shaw's) tenure battle with UCSC see the Nancy Shaw collection at the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society.

Stoller's interest in AIDS, as shown by her subject files, ranged widely beyond the gay white male model of the early epidemicirca Stoller collected popular and academic articles, pamphlets, clippings, organizational files, and other materials on Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans, multicultural, and international issues. South Africa is represented by a series of posters and some other ephemera. Australia is represented by a number of research articles from Macquarie University, and the Netherlands (Holland) is represented by stickers and condoms as well as conference materials. A significant portion of the subject files concern women's issues including children and AIDS, education, heterosexual transmission, lesbians, perinatal transmission and pregnancy, prostitution, and women and AIDS. Ethics, demographics and the religious response are also covered.

The collection contains significant amounts of material on a number of agencies and organizations. The big three are the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF); the California Prostitute Education Project (Cal-PEP); and ACT-UP New York. Other organizations represented by multiple folders-worth of materials include: ACHA (American College Health Association - Task Force on the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS); APHA (American Public Health Association); City of New York and City of San Francisco Commissions on Human Rights; NSBC (National Skills Building Conference); WARN (Women and AIDS Risk Network); and University AIDS Events (and papers) from UCSF, UCB, UCSC, SFSU, and Macquarie University in Australia.

Other agencies and organizations documented to a greater or lesser extent include: AAPCHO (Association of Asian/Pacific Community Health Organization); AIDS Action Pledge, San Francisco; AIDS Health Project, San Francisco; California AIDS Project; SAMHA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health in AIDS); Santa Cruz AIDS Project; the Stop AIDS Project, San Francisco; WORLD (Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases); AIDS Action Council; CARE AIDS (Prevention for Substance Abuse Treatment Programs, New York); Gay Men's Health Crisis [New York]; the National Gay Task Force (NGTF); and the New York City Task Force on Women & AIDS.

The collection is divided into 5 Series, based primarily on Stoller's own division of materials, and most of Stoller's folder headings and order have been retained, with occasional renaming of folders or subseries for clarity, and order imposed within or between topics/series/subseries when the original order was absent or unclear.

The series are: Series I: AIDS Subject Files; Series II: Organizations; Series III: Writings; Series IV: Administrative, Prison and Non-AIDS Files; Series V: Ephemera. Some of these series include subseries.