According to the Government Printing Office blog, Government Book Talk, books about NASA are among their top three best-selling categories of government produced publications. The other two are Civics and Citizenship and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tax Guides. NASA established its history office in 1959 to “disseminate aerospace information as widely as possible and help NASA managers understand and thus benefit from the study of past accomplishments and difficulties.” Since then, the space agency has steadily published hundreds of volumes of information on their activities. In addition to NASA’s inhouse publications, even more books featuring NASA are produced each year by academics, independent researchers, journalists, and scientists.
Very broadly, NASA research can usually be broken down into four categories: Project/program history, biography, administrative history, and cultural history. These categories are not fixed, of course, but they do provide a framework for how researchers (and archivists) can conceptualize records and information related to NASA. I’ve found that most research topics can be considered within one of these categories.
This categorization is helpful when considering the next point: referring a researcher to a source. In a previous blog, I discussed NASA’s Technical Reports Server, a useful resource for technical and scientific information published by NASA. The NTRS, however, may not be as helpful for topics like cultural history, and biography. For those, it’s useful to consider the NASA History Series. This list of downloadable secondary sources covers a wide array of topics, useful for a researcher before they make requests for archival materials. Of course, many of these documents would be considered primary sources in their own right. But perhaps that’s a subject for another blog!
As another example of this kind of secondary/primary source, consider something like the Spaceport News periodical from Kennedy Space Center. This is a long-running NASA publication from one of its most famous centers. It serves as a unique monthly time capsule of what was going on at KSC for decades. This kind of primary source can inform researcher’s requests into other records. Many NASA centers have similar internal periodicals that provide valuable insight into their activities.
A working knowledge of secondary sources is a valuable tool for researchers and archivists. These collections can provide clues for further research and suggest what archival collections may be worth pursuing. Keeping apprised of available secondary sources is useful for anyone interested in mining archival materials for hidden gems.
Related Reading: What Makes Researching NASA a Challenge?