Collections of the National Air and Space Museum Archives

The Archives currently holds ten thousand cubic feet of aviation and space related material, including hundreds of collections. Personal and professional papers 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 are compiled by someone other than the creator of the actual documents and consist primarily of published material gathered from various sources to form reference files around one or more topics.

The finding aids below provide a small sampling of guides to the Collections in our holdings. Although our collections are in a number of media, those whose finding aids are presented below are largely paper-based. Most of the finding aids below are offered in two formats: HTML and Adobe Acrobat PDF, the latter for those who wish to print out a finding aid. The free Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed to view PDF files.

In addition to the online finding aids, the Archives Division 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.

Researchers must make appointments to visit the Archives. If you wish to conduct research in any of the following collections, please contact the Archives Division Reference Desk at 703-572-4045 and we will be glad to assist you. Please call for an appointment as far in advance of your planned visit as possible, as space is limited. Photocopiers, microfilm reader/printers and videoprinters are available to researchers for a fee. Permission to use scanners (supplied by the researcher) must be obtained in advance.