It is available for use in many university and research libraries in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The Catalogue is arranged alphabetically, with personal names, geographic names, and topical subject entries interfiled in one sequence. Most of volume four is a chronologically arranged list of materials in the item-catalogued collections. The Catalogue also serves as an index to the Society's second level of manuscript description, collection descriptions. If a collection is available on microfilm, that information is stamped on the collection description.
Large collections have longer collection descriptions, which often include contents lists.
Contents lists itemize collections at the box, folder, or volume level, providing more specific access to the information contained within collections. Handwritten card indexes to the correspondence in several collections not item-catalogued are available in the manuscripts department. When these exist, they are mentioned in the collection descriptions. A third means of access to AAS manuscripts is through the RLIN database. AMC records contain information comparable to the information found in collection descriptions, but offer the advantages of automated searching.