Aviation Collection
Explore resources on aeronautics and astronautics from around the world, covering everything from the earliest human flight attempts to modern rocketry and space exploration.
Explore the Aviation Collection
The Aviation Collection consists of approximately 11,500 volumes, particularly monographs in Dewey Decimal classification numbers 533.6 (Aeromechanics) and 629.1 (Aerospace engineering), plus periodical runs, photographs and vertical file materials.
Seattle played a pivotal role in the early development of flight. Early aviators built and tested their flying machines here, delivering mail to Alaska, transporting medicines to inland communities, and using local airfields to depart on record-setting journeys, including the first flight to circumnavigate the globe. You can learn more about this early history in the Aviation Collection through publications developed by airplane manufacturers Boeing, Curtiss and Douglas, spanning 1930 to 1950.
This collection is non-circulating (meaning it can only be accessed in the Library) and is available by appointment through the Hugh and Jane Ferguson Seattle Room, located at the Central Library on Level 10. Appointments are available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. You may book 30 minutes to 2 hours of time.
Preview the Collection
Using the catalog’s advanced search, you can explore this collection by clicking the Collections drop-down menu and selecting any collections listed as “REF – Aviation Collection”.
About the Collection
The Aviation Collection was established in 1928 with a gift from the young Boeing Company to create a library focused on aviation development. At the time, Boeing did not have a research library for its engineers, who were designing planes for both domestic use and combat. As World War II approached, Boeing shifted its focus to military contracts.
The Aviation Collection added materials on the history of flight, from early works on balloon travel, kites and "flying machines" to studies on aircraft performance in combat and domestic travel. Technical manuals on the design, operation and repair of airplane and jet engines were also added, along with company annual reports and manufacturing catalogs.
In the early years, Boeing staff visited the collection regularly to do research and borrow materials. Boeing eventually developed its own research library, but the collection continued to grow until the 1950s, when a reduced acquisitions budget led to fewer new materials being added.
Dissatisfied with the limited subject indexing available via book cataloging, librarians supplemented the card catalog with the Aviation Collection Index (ACI), located in the Seattle Room.
Aviation-related newspaper articles are also referenced in the ACI, providing access to the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, New York Times as well as Flight and Aviation Week magazines. Indexing spans the years from the 1950s to the 1990s.