The Debating Society Collection combines the 18th- and 19th-century libraries that were kept in the meeting rooms of the Academy’s Golden Branch Debating Society and Gideon Soule Literary Society.

In addition to copies of presentations made at society gatherings, the collection contains the speeches of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster 1796, and other orators; first editions of works by Washington Irving and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; various New England college catalogs dating from the early 1800s; and textbooks used for coursework in Latin, Hebrew, English, history, mathematics, geography, and public speaking.