The museum’s collections originate from three primary sources:
The first is the former Yilan Literature Committee, Cultural Center and the Department of Cultural Affairs from which we inherited their local folk relic collection. The second source is a collection of prehistoric cultural relics excavated from archeological sites in the County, including sites such as Wanshan, Da Zhu Wei, Qi Wu Lan and Yilan Agricultural School. The third source targets the combined resources of Yilan County through discoveries, investigations, field gatherings, exchange, procurement, donations and allotments from the government.

Currently, the majority of the collection includes folk relics and prehistoric cultural relics. As far as natural science related specimens are concerned, apart from the purchased animal, plant and rock specimens for exhibition purposes, the insect specimen collections from the Yilan County Natural History Educational Museum are also preserved in the museum .

The museum also actively promotes the development of projects in the digital archives. Through planning and creation of the cultural relic archive management system, the archives can be methodically and systematically collected, arranged and interpreted, while digitization is utilized to preserve, link and integrate information dispersed across various fields, so that the general public will be able to share the museum’s resources. The cultural relic digital archiving system of the museum is currently under construction; once it is completed it will provide convenient searching and browsing services.