Special Collections

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Special Collections include manuscript materials related to aviation history and local history.

Special Collections and Archives collects manuscript material on aviation history, with a natural emphasis on the lives and work of Wilbur and Orville Wright, the inventors of powered flight. Wright State University, named for these two Dayton natives, serves as a research center for the Wrights' life and work. Special Collections and Archives also serves as a research center for the history of aviation and aviation technology in general, with particular geographic emphasis on aviation innovation and history in Ohio and the Miami Valley, home of the Wright Brothers.

Special Collections and Archives also collects manuscript materials relating to local history in the following counties: Auglaize, Champaign, Clark, Darke, Greene, Logan, Mercer, Miami, Montgomery, Preble, and Shelby Counties. Types of manuscript materials collected may include: individual and family papers; business, labor union, and transportation records; papers of civic, cultural, and fraternal organizations, churches, women's organizations, political figures, ethnic groups settling in the Miami Valley, and local medical history.