The Macmillan Brown Library holds the University of Canterbury's New Zealand and Pacific research collection and is named after Professor John Macmillan Brown, who donated money for the library building and provided an endowment for the maintenance of the library's collections. 

One of the library's significant holdings is Justice Erima Northcroft's collection of Tokyo war crimes trial papers. Northcroft was New Zealand's representative on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which between 1946 and 1948 tried Japanese people charged with war crimes during the Second World War. Other copies of the tribunal documents have been lost over the years, and Northcroft's collection is the most complete set, making them of international importance.

In 2010 the collection was inscribed onto the Asia Pacific register of UNESCO's Memory of the World programme, which promotes the protection and awareness of archival heritage. Here, university staff Paul Millar (left), Neil Boister and Jill Durney pose with the collection that year.