Friends of the Air Force Academy Library

The USAF Academy's McDermott Library has benefitted by the organization's efforts in collection, preservation, conservation, and documentation of pertinent historical documents, audio visual materials, photographs, and artifacts, as well as purchase of books and artifacts. Specifically, the organization has identified and restored fragile audio and visual media found in the library, helped digitize archival materials, and established a dedicated facility for such materials within special collections. We have developed, edited, and uploaded finding aids to the library's searchable database, making many collections now searchable online. In addition, the organization solicited, received, processed, and gifted to the McDermott Library several valuable historical collections, updated a complete set of guidelines for all phases of access, digitizing, archiving, and producing searchable finding aids for donated collections. The organization's website has been updated and reflects current content, including a celebration of the United States Air Force's 75th Anniversary. And finally, the organization awarded one Clark-Yudkin Research Fellowships to a scholar who used the special collections to study war trauma and its consequences within the larger historical context, emphasizing the human experience and costs in aerospace history.