SCA holds a variety of local history resources related to development, industry, and settlement in what is today the Region of Waterloo. Collections include maps, fire insurance plans, business and city directories, yearbooks from local high schools, government documents outlining local county or village by-laws, and newspapers including restored copies of issues of the _Berliner Journal_ for the years 1859-1889. The department is also home to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record Photographic Negative Collection, which documents local news events, community activities, regional development, and human-interest stories between 1938-2001.

Many of SCA’s local history collections consist of the institutional archives of local businesses and organizations, such as Dare Foods Limited, Electrohome, Fritsch Pharmacy, the Dominion Rubber Company, Kitchener-Waterloo Record, and the Rotary Club of Kitchener. In addition, the department maintains the papers of the Breithaupt, Bolender Ball, Ratz, Rieder, Schantz, and Schneider families, among many others. These collections complement several printed genealogies, family histories, and monographs also held by the department.

Combined, topics of note in these collections include cultural and community association development, family planning, mourning and grief as understood through spiritualism, and the lives of early settler families, including those of women and children.