Collections

Overview
Learn about the collecting areas of the Special Collections & Archives Department. The topics span aviation, local and regional history, Cold War aerospace technology, genealogy, aerospace medicine and human factors, Paul Laurence Dunbar, History of Medicine, Wright State University History, Aviation Juvenile Literature, and Exhibits and Images.

Aviation History
Search or browse information on our numerous collections documenting aviation from the first flight of the Wright Brothers to the invention of the jet engine and vertical flight.

Aerospace Medicine and Human Factors Engineering History
Collections include the papers of Ross A. McFarland, the father of human factors engineering and Howard Hasbrook Aviation Crash Injury Research Collection. WSU is also one of a select group of repositories for NASA shuttle flight medical data.

Local & Regional History
Search or browse information on collections documenting a wide range of individual and family papers, business and labor union records, the records of civic, cultural, and fraternal organizations, churches, and women’s organizations. Special Collections and Archives, as a member of the Ohio Network of American History Research Centers, collects local government records and manuscript materials from an eleven county area in central southwestern Ohio.

Local Government Records
Wright State University, in cooperation with the Ohio Historical Society, is the official repository and archives for local government records for an 11-county area in central southwestern Ohio. Our online guide to the records are organized alphabetically by county, and then by the office that generated the records.

Genealogy Resources
Find information on our holdings of vital records, family histories, manuscript collections and more!

University Archives
The archives actively collects and preserves the historical records documenting the history of Wright State University. Learn what records are in the archives and how to access the records.