The Islamic and Middle Eastern (IME) collection includes resources in printed monographs, journals, audio and visual materials, and electronic databases plus related items for study and research about the Islamic World and the Middle East. The IME unit is responsible for acquiring these research materials from around the world in all major languages and processing them for availability and borrowing.

The collection comes from a long standing series of courses on the contemporary Middle East, along with transfers of materials from the renowned collection of the Hoover Institution Library on the Middle East collected over some 70 years. Since the merger of the two collections, the scope has grown with the establishment of endowed programs in Islamic Studies, Iranian Studies, and a newly added research center on the contemporary Middle East at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.