Research entities in the museum include the Office of Public Archaeology and the Archaeological Technical Laboratory, both of which offer part-time employment to interested and qualified students. The Office of Public Archaeology is one of the leading archaeological contracting organizations in the intermountain area, with a permanent staff of eight. The technical lab specializes in botanical and minerals analyses. The museum works closely with Anthropology Department faculty, several of whom have research offices in Allen Hall. Offices of the New World Archaeological Foundation are also in the museum.
Museum collections contain prehistoric and ethnographic artifacts from various parts of the world.
The bulk of holdings are from the Southwest, Mesoamerica, Polynesia, and the Great Basin, especially Utah Valley. The museum also cares for a collection of more than 20,000 black and white and color photographs that document BYU archaeological research and the artifactual materials. Information on this collection is now computer accessible for interested scholars. The museum encourages students to inquire about research possibilities using its collections. The task of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History is the scholarly study of the Latter-day Saint past.