The Suckow collection is an extensive collection of manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, and artifacts from the life of an important regionalist author. The collection is divided into four series. Series I is Ruth Suckow Subject Files and Correspondence. Here are kept items from her personal life, such as artwork and needlework, recipes, bookplates, and her spectacles. Here also are kept clippings, records from her days as an apiarist, biographical materials, address books, and other personal materials. There is a large subseries of photographs here, as well as a collection of clippings. Suckow's correspondence comprises an important subseries, as do the records of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association.

Series II is comprised of Suckow's manuscripts. This series contains manuscripts for most of her work, including some unpublished work. Usually included are the typescript, but sometimes there are extensive notes on characters, and some short stories include the published piece.

Series III, Other Writers and Family Members encompases materials from members of Ruth's extended family. Here are included items from the Washburn, Suckow, Kluckhohn, and Dafoe families, as well as materials from Ruth's husband, Ferner Nuhn, a writer himself and a painter. Also included here are scholarly essays on Ruth Suckow by students as well as international scholars.

Series IV, the 2007 addendum, is comprised of photocopies of a scrapbook of the extended Suckow family. This is accompanied by a CD of the images contained in the scrapbook.

Series V, 2001 addendum, was acquired long after the original collection, in 2011. It is a gift of Barb and Scott DePenning via Bob Suckow and the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association. It is comprised of letters from Ruth to her partner in the Earlville apiary business, Laura Werkmeister. It deals mostly with bees and cats, but there is a letter here that starts, "Ferner and I were married yesterday." In previous letters she had made reference to "the boy who visited us at the apiary last year" presumably meaning Nuhn. There is also a photograph here of the method, apparently originated by Suckow, that was used at the Orchard Apiary for wintering their beehives.

Series VI: Association books. These are books owned by Suckow or, in some cases, her father.

Several items that were with the Suckow collection were de-accessioned because they seemed to have no relation to this writer, but they are listed here along with the collection with which they were placed. Mother's Whirring Wheel Rug: A Lady Family Genealogy. Transferred to Dickinson County Historical Society, 412 S. Campbell, Abilene, KS 67410 Diary/Calendar of Hall F. Greef, September 10 [1918?] to March 10 [1919?] Goings-on at Grinnell College. Transferred to Special Collections at Grinnell College Fifty Years a Minister: A Tribute to Rev. William E. Grassie. Transferred to Erie County (PA) Historical Society Colonel Hinman Rhodes pocket diary 1866. Typewritten transcription. MsC906