Global Collections include rare books, manuscripts, printed documents, and visual material, including maps.  A newly formalized collecting area as of 2023, Global Collections is focused on materials that document the worldwide impacts of European overseas imperial projects between the years 1600 and 1900, including but not limited to those in Africa, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and South Asia.

As such, Global Collections acquisitions intersect with and extend many established Princeton University Library collecting areas with the goal of challenging dominant contact and colonization narratives and underscoring the experiences and perspectives of subjects of European imperial conquest and rule.