The collection consists of personal and working papers of Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda, Colombian poet, journalist, and diplomat: notebooks, manuscripts of poems, nonfiction writings, speeches and interviews, correspondence, documents, photographs, papers of others, and printed material.

The collection primarily contains manuscript poems, nonfiction, and speeches and interviews, dating from the 1970s to 2011, and correspondence from 1969 through 2011. The strengths of the collection are the autograph and typescript manuscript poems which document the author's creative process in writing poetry, numerous nonfiction manuscripts on primarily Colombian literature and art, and correspondence with other Latin American authors.

Cobo Borda's poetry in manuscript form includes poems which are included in the anthologies Todos los poetas son santos, published by Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1977, and El animal que duerme en cada uno y otros poemas, published by El áncora Editores in 1995. The poems in the collection which are labeled "Poeta en Tokio" probably appear in published form in Poemas orientales y bogotanos (1991). There are also manuscript poems for two books, Furioso amor and Amor absoluto, tentatively scheduled for publication in 1997. Of his nonfiction books, there are manuscripts for Obregón (on Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón), Fabulas y leyendas de El Dorado, Cultura y violencia a través de la obra de García Márquez, and Desocupado lector.

In his role as director of the cultural magazine Eco from 1973-1984, Cobo Borda corresponded with many Latin American writers and cultural figures. Representative authors in the Correspondence series are Octavio Paz, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Germán Arciniegas, literary critics Angel Rama, Rafael Gutiérrez Girardot and Martha Canfield, Argentinian novelists Manuel Puig and Angélica Gorodischer and poet Enrique Molina, Colombian novelists Darío Ruiz Gómez and Darío Jaramillo Agudelo, and poets and essayists José Emilio Pacheco, José Kozer, Juan Liscano, Elkin Restrepo, Alvaro Mutis, Guillermo Sucre, and José Luis Díaz Granados. The collection also includes a large amount of correspondence with publishers, editors, and literary agents. Publishing firms represented in the correspondence include Editorial Seix Barral, Fondo de Cultura Económica, and El áncora and Monte Avila Editores. There is substantial correspondence with publishers or editors Pere Gimferrer, Jaime García Terrés, Vicente Gerbasi, Eugenio Montejo, and others.

The collection also includes curriculum vitae of J. G. Cobo Borda; photographs of Cobo Borda and others covering the period 1985-1996; a few papers of others, most notably, seven nonfiction articles by José Bianco, dated 1973-1984; and printed material, including published poems of Cobo Borda and several articles about the author.

Furthermore, there is a series of minimally processed additional papers which contain notebooks, manuscripts, general and diplomatic correspondence, photographs, video cassettes, audio cassettes, scrapbooks, and miscellaneous materials.