In the late 1800's, Dutch physician and feminist Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen began collecting books, pamphlets and periodicals reflecting the revolution of a feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights. By the time their successors finished their work in 1945, the Gerritsen Collection was the greatest single source for the study of women's history in the world, with materials spanning four centuries and 15 languages. The Gerritsen curators gathered more than 4,700 publications from continental Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, dating from 1543-1945. The anti-feminist case is presented as well as the pro-feminist; many other titles present a purely objective record of the condition of women at a given time.

The Online Contents service of the Special Subject Collection Political Science and Peace Research is part of the Online Contents database. It offers access to tables of contents of more than 870 journals relevant for study and research. New journals were added until December 2013 by the Special Subject Collection. Thus the database contains approximately 1.478,600 records of journal articles and reviews.

The SpringerLink platform provides MPG staff with access to a huge collection of English and German eBooks from 2005 onwards, as well as the English and the German collection of the Springer Book Archive (1842-2004). In addition, the content of selected book series is available. Includes major reference works and dictionaries. Max Planck researchers who publish a monograph or edited volume with Springer Nature as an Open Access eBook receive a discount on the standard Book Publishing Charge. MPDL covers the costs remaining on a pro rata basis. Further details are available on the MPDL website.