The Jay Miller Aviation History Collection

The Jay Miller Aviation History Collection is the product of almost 40 years of intense collecting by Jay Miller of Arlington, Texas. It is one of the world's most significant aviation and aerospace reference libraries. In 1995, Miller sold The Collection to the Aerospace Education Center in Little Rock. Collections within The Collection include:

The book collection: Approximately 6,000 books. Subjects covered include military aviation, civil aviation, commercial aviation, the aerospace industry in general, hang gliding, lighter-than-air craft, paper airplanes, model airplanes, home-built aircraft, space vehicles, space exploration politics, space foreign policy, aviation art, autobiography, biography, aviation and aerospace instruction, aviation history, and aviation and aerospace fiction. Approximately 300 of the books are in foreign languages (e.g., German, French, Italian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish). The book collection is included in the Central Arkansas Library System's online catalog.

The journal collection: Approximately 50,000 journals and magazines. There are almost 900 titles representing 30 countries. The earliest issue is dated 1909.

The manuscripts collection: Approximately 650 linear feet of unprocessed manuscripts that include newspaper clippings; news releases and other information related to specific aircraft; files; correspondence, most original and handwritten; autographs; postcards; scrapbooks containing aviation art, amateur sketches of airplanes, and model airplane drawings; flight schedules; aeronautical charts and maps; NACA and NASA technical reports and research memoranda; audio and video recordings; microfilm and microfiche; pamphlets; and broadsides.

The photograph collection: Approximately 350,000 processed and unprocessed photographs and slides including images of commercial, military, and civil aircraft; missiles and spacecraft, experimental aircraft; helicopters; vertical takeoff and landing craft; home-built aircraft, lighter-than-air craft; and restored historic aircraft.

Significant items in The Collection include a complete, original, first edition set of Jane's All The World's Aircraft (1909 to present); a number of pre-Wright (1903) titles including the very rare Foujas St. Fond volume (1784) describing the first balloon experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, and a first edition copy of Astra Castra (1865); complete runs of many of the world's most important aviation periodicals, including the only complete set of Air Pictorial known in the US; and many first-generation pre-World War II prints (about 90% of those are original World War I images).