PREFACE

BACKGROUND AND METHODOLOGY

This project began in 1976 under the direction of Donald S. Lopez, then Assistant Director for Aeronautics and Edmund T. Wooldridge, Associate Curator in the Department of Aeronautics, National Air and Space Museum. Mr. Wooldridge produced an initial draft of the guide in 1979. Dr. Nancy L. Matthews, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, developed additional information in the mid-1980s. Messrs. C. D. Gull and C. L. Smith joined the project in 1985 and 1988 respectively as volunteers editing the text. Martin J. Collins, curator in the National Air and Space Museum's Department of Space History, secured funds for final editing and publication as A Directory of Sources for Air and Space History: Primary Historical Collections in United States Repositories; A Preliminary Edition. That work was published in 1989. Mr. Gull produced this revised edition under the direction of Dr. Thomas F. Soapes and Mr. Dana Bell in the National Air and Space Museum's Archives.

The Directory was compiled by consulting printed directories of libraries, museums, associations, government agencies, private corporations, and major aerospace contractors. This search produced a list of candidate repositories to be surveyed in detail.

Staff devised a questionnaire asking for information on each of a repository's collections within the subject scope. The questionnaire sought basic repository information (institutional name and subdivision(s), address(es), phone number(s)), and, following the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections' basic descriptive data such as collection title and reference number, provenance, dates, size, brief descriptive note, and availability and format of finding aids.

The questionnaire was administered by mail, with follow-up checks by phone as time and resources permitted. As the raw data came in, it was collected in vertical files by the project staff and then edited and input into a computer database.

SCOPE AND CONTENT

The scope of the Guide encompasses the activities of individuals and institutions in air and space, encompassing social, political, economic, scientific, and technological aspects of the two fields. Only collections in United States repositories are described, although the collections themselves may be international in scope. Chronological coverage extends from early balloon experimentation in the 19th century to aviation and space activities to around 1985. The Guide describes only primary source materials. Represented in the volume are a wide range of traditional and technical material types and formats,including manuscripts, photographs, negatives, blueprints, technical manuals, pilots' logbooks, charts, diaries, correspondence, scrapbooks, motion pictures, video records, sound recordings, oral histories, electronic data and other types of material. Published material, such as books, journals, and contract reports commonly found in library collections are omitted.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION RESOURCES

Published Volumes

1. The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) has been published by the Library of Congress since 1959 (Cataloging Distribution Service, Washington, D. C. 20541). The bound volumes occupy nearly four feet on the shelves, and they included (as of 1989) some 58,500 collections in 1,325 repositories. The indexes contain some 645,000 entries to topical subjects and to personal, family, corporate and geographical names.
It was not possible to compare the material gathered for this Guide with the entries in the NUCMC, nor to search the card catalog and the published volumes of NUCMC to discover appropriate collections. The Library adopted the USMARC-AMC standard electronic data format for manuscript collections in 1988 and has contributed the entries for 1986 forward to RLIN.

2. Aeronautics and Space Flight Collections, edited by Catherine D. Scott (New York, Haworth Press, 1985; Special Collections: v. 3, nos. 1-2) primarily describes book and periodical collections, and contains a chapter on aerospace information bibliographical control. It also provides coverage of selected primary historical collections, some of which are contained in this volume.

3. The Guide to the National Archives of the United States (Washington, 1987, 896 p.) lists as of 1970 at least 85 major collections potentially of interest to this field, containing millions of items. These collections are omitted from this Guide to avoid unnecessary duplication in printing.

4. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has issued a 61 page pamphlet, History at NASA, The NASA History Office; NASA HHR-50; (NASA Headquarters, Washington, D. C. 20546, June 1986), which contains brief descriptions of the History Office's and the agency's holdings, as well as guidance on how to access these materials. Papers of NASA administrators and other personnel can be found in several of the National Archives and Records Administration's Presidential Libraries, the Library of Congress, and various university libraries. Search this Guide electronically to locate individual collections.

5. In 1973 the Office of Air Force History in Washington published a 245 page directory entitled United States Air Force History, A Guide to Documentary Sources compiled by Lawrence J. Paszek. Reprinted in 1986, it describes over 738 collections, many of which are included in this Guide with edited and updated descriptions.

6. In 1991 the National Air and Space Museum published its Guide to the Collections of the National Air and Space Archives . This publication describes a selection of about 250 collections acquired by the museum through 1989. These entries have been added to this Guide's database as part of the continuing effort to include all accessions, which were about 1460 in number as of November 1994.