The processing of the Keys papers began as an intern project. The intern, however, was unable to complete the work before the end of the intemship period and I was assigned to rebox the materials that had been left unprocessed so that higher priority activities could continue. The long-term plan was that I would finish processing the collection when other projects had been completed. At this time I discovered two things: first, many of the documents had been marked for filing, apparently by Keys or Mr. Swan, his confidential secretary; second, much of the material was no longer in this order. When my work load allowed me to return to the processing of the Keys Papers, I surveyed the collection. The remaining original folder labels and cross-reference sheets appeared to confirm my first discovery - many of the documents had been marked for filing.

Most of my work since has been directed at undoing the mishandling from the initial work, most of which occurred in the files relating to the Curtiss group of companies. Almost all of the items dating from mid-1928 onwards carry some sort of filing marks: these items have been reorganized into the indicated filing units (see folder list, below). Unfortunately, enclosures often were not marked: some of these were refiled in 1987 and their provenance is, therefore, lost. A close textual analysis of the collection would be necessary to reunite enclosures with their cover letters; current work load and staff levels preclude this labor-intensive operation.

Materials pre-dating mid-1928 or otherwise unmarked have been filed by "best guess" from the correspondents and subject of the letters. Some materials doubtless remain misfiled. Researchers should examine folders that seem even marginally related to their topic for unmarked but related documents.

Paul Silbermann
September 1994

Note on the 2003 Revision of the Keys Papers Finding Aid

In 2003 the Archives staff discovered that the electronic version of the Keys Papers finding aid was no longer accessible. An existing copy of the finding aid was scanned and reformatted into the style then in use by the NASM Archives. Aside from the correction of several typographical errors, several changes to the finding aid occurred at that time, including an expanded scope and content note and series descriptions. The largest single change was the intellectual reorganization of the collection from four series (Pre-1932 by Correspondent, Pre-1932 by Genre, Post-1932, Miscellaneous) to three series (Pre-1932, Post-1932, Miscellaneous) with the two earlier Pre-1932 series redesignated as subseries of the new Pre-1932 series. At the same time, folders entries for materials in Boxes 29-32 (legal and oversized materials) were replaced in the basic listing by cross-references and the entries moved to separate listings by box. This "reorganization" did not involve any physical reordering of the material in the collection so that citations to Box and Folder numbers based upon the earlier finding aid are not affected.

Paul Silbermann
April 2003