The María Rosa Oliver Papers consists of writings, correspondence, documents, drawings, photographs, printed material, and papers of others collected by Oliver. The strengths of the collection are the manuscripts by Oliver on a wide range of cultural subjects, covering the 1930s to the 1970s, correspondence with writers and editors of many nationalities, and photographs of Oliver with other cultural figures in Argentina and in her working role for the World Peace Council in the period 1953-1962.

The Writings series contains autograph and typescript drafts of Oliver's nonfiction articles, a small amount of typescript chapters of her published memoirs, and one typescript short story. The Correspondence series contains her correspondence with a wide range of Latin American authors and editors, including over 80 letters or cards by Victoria Ocampo, 23 letters by Eduardo Mallea, 40 letters in English by Waldo Frank, and 11 by prominent American dance promoter Lincoln Kirstein. Other Latin American authors or editors represented in the correspondence are Gabriela Mistral, Miguel Angel Asturias, Alfonso Reyes, José Bianco, Bernardo Kordon, Juan C. Onetti, Gabriel García Márquez, Brazilians Jorge Amado and Vinícius de Moraes, Cubans Roberto Fernández Retamar and Marcia Leiseca de Otero, Mexicans Arnaldo Orfila Reynal and Jesús Silva Herzog, and French authors Roger Caillois, Alfred Métraux, Simone de Beauvoir, and photographer Gisèle Freund. There are also 126 letters by Argentine film director Luis Saslavsky and letters from other political and cultural figures in Argentina, such as Rodolfo Aráoz Alfaro, Gregorio Bermann, and Raimundo Ongaro. The collection also includes correspondence with officers of the World Peace Council at the international and local level, such as the president Frédéric Joliot-Curie, chairman J. D. Bernal, Argentinian Alfredo Varela, Colombians Jorge Regueros Peralta, Jorge Zalamea, and Diego Montaña Cuéllar, and Chilean Olga Poblete.

The correspondence also contains Oliver's personal correspondence with family members, primarily with her mother, María Rita Romero de Oliver, and niece, María Teresa Bortagaray de Testa. There is a small amount of correspondence between other people which includes letters by others to Victoria Ocampo and Spanish authors Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León. The collection also includes Oliver family documents, drawings of and by María Rosa Oliver, and 135 photographs of Oliver from circa 1899 to the 1970s and of her family and friends, such as Victoria Ocampo, Waldo Frank, Lincoln Kirstein, Luis and Dalila Saslavsky, and Mexican actors Cantinflas and Dolores Del Rio. The Papers of Others series includes manuscripts of speeches about Oliver by José Bianco, Norberto Frontini, and Jorge Zalamea, and a manuscript by Raúl González Tuñón, "Cronica de la guerrilla literaria: El movimiento martinfierrista y el grupo del Boedo." There is a substantial amount of printed material of articles, both by and about Oliver, chiefly spanning the years 1934 to 1970. The printed material series includes one scrapbook compiled by the author, reviews of her books, Mundo, mi casa and La vida cotidiana, several posthumous reviews of her book Mi fe es el hombre, and articles about her.