The collection documents Dorrit Hoffleit's career at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Harvard and Yale Universities, and the Maria Mitchell Observatory, as well as including material on women astronomers and the history of astronomy; it also documents the life of Hoffleit's mother and provides information on other members of the Hoffleit family. The collection includes appointment books, correspondence, articles, papers, and other publications, lecture notes, clippings, certificates, plaques, and photographs; and family memoirs and other autobiographical writings, a diary, poetry, and correspondence. The bulk of Hoffleit's correspondence with her mother and brother is in German, as are her mother's diary, and several poems.