The Archives and Special Collections Department of Frazar Memorial Library at McNeese State University (MSU Archives) collects, preserves, and makes available to patrons materials in the following three categories:

• McNeese State University.  The MSU Archives serves as the university's archives repository, maintaining records created by university groups, departments, and other bodies, as well as any other items concerning the history of McNeese State University.  It also maintains the university's scrapbook and permanent collections of university Logs (yearbook), Contrabands (student newspaper), annual catalogs, budgets, issues of the McNeese Review, and theses written by university students.
• Southwest Louisiana.  The Archives acts as a manuscript repository for collections about Southwest Louisiana.  It collects materials documenting all aspects of the history of Lake Charles and the parishes of Allen, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, and Jefferson Davis.
• Special Book Collections.  The Archives Department administers Frazar Memorial Library's collections of rare books and books about Southwest Louisiana.  These collections include the Friends of the Library Collection, the Dr. Samuel Marino Collection, the Dr. R. Gordon Holcombe, Jr. Collection, the United Daughters of the Confederacy Collection, and other rare books owned by the Library.

The McNeese Archives acquires unpublished records and papers, books, pamphlets, periodicals, maps, architectural drawings and blueprints, paintings, photographic negatives and prints, audio recordings, video recordings, microfilm, clothing, and artifacts of a manageable size and weight.  It also creates materials through oral history interviews, scholarly research by staff members, the retention of departmental files, and the authorized copying of materials at other repositories.

The McNeese Archives cooperates with other institutions and organizations that seek to preserve historic materials or promote public understanding of history in the five-parish area.  Such cooperation includes but is not limited to consultation and assistance with the organization and preservation of historic materials at other institutions, the maintenance of document collections of area historical associations within the McNeese Archives, and consultation and assistance with the enactment of public history programs.

The Archivist and staff adhere to the Society of American Archivists' revised Code of Ethics for Archivists of 1992 in all of their work.