The National Folklife collections mainly contain objects representing the material culture of the traditional way of life in Ireland in the period between the end of the Great Famine in the middle of the 19th Century and the exhausted decade that followed the end of World War II in the 1950s.
The collections may be divided into four broad areas: farming and fishing; trades and business; social life and pastimes; and the home and daily routine.
The collections, however, are quite complex and many objects can be categorised under a number of different headings. The following are the broadly designated collections: