COLLECTIONS

The Archives Division holds approximately twelve hundred collections of several types.

• Personal and professional papers may document the professional activities of the material's creator as well as personal and family matters.
  
• Corporate and organizational records reflect the activities of those entities.
  
• Artificial collections compiled by someone other than the creator consist primarily of published materials gathered from a number of sources to form reference files around one or more topics.

A major attraction of these collections is their visual representation of air and space craft through photographs and technical drawings. The latter vary from three-view drawings to detailed engineering plans, many of which are on microfilm. The archives also holds many technical manuals that document the design, construction, and performance of air and space craft and the engines that powered them. These documents assist aircraft restorers and modelers as well as historians of technology.

These collections are described in this 1994 Guide to the Collections of the National Air and Space Museum Archives. Please contact the Archives Division for more current information.

More online information on Archives Division collections will be added in the future. Currently, a small selection of Archives Division collections is described in a series of online finding aids.

RESEARCH POLICY

The Archives Division's collections are generally open to anyone with a research need. Access to some materials may be restricted by their donors. Fragile materials may also be restricted to assure their preservation. Staff will make every effort to inform researchers of known copyright restrictions.

Highlighted Collections

More detailed information on a portion of our high-use and/or fully-processed collections is available through the links below.

Photo Archives

Film Archives

Technical Drawings

Aircraft Technical Manuals

Aircraft History Cards

Technical Reference Files

Captured German and Japanese Air Technical Documents

Collections with Online Finding Aids

Other Collections

The National Air and Space Museum Archives has contributed descriptions of over 500 of our collections to the Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS), a pan-institutional system that provides access, for staff and public alike, to the information resources held by the Institution's libraries, archives, art inventories, and research units. Please visit SIRIS to search on these collections.

Requests for additional information on any collection, or assistance with a specific research project may be directed to the NASM Archives Reference Desk.