Did you know that you can donate personal space-related files, books, manuals, photographs, models, memorabilia, private artifacts, mementos, etc. to the University of Houston – Clear Lake (UHCL) Archives to help preserve JSC’s space history?

Around the year 2000, JSC entered into a partnership with UHCL to house a special JSC Collection within the UHCL Archive to make it available to the public for research and study. The JSC History Collection contains 1.5 million documents covering more than 50 years of NASA’s human spaceflight activities and is also home to the JSC Oral History Collection. This collection includes items donated directly from JSC in conjunction with the NASA JSC Archivist and from those that worked for NASA (civil servant and contractor). Your donation would be a very special gift to help preserve and tell our rich NASA story!

NAL Historic Preservation Volunteers

In addition to soliciting donations to the UHCL Archive, the NAL provides volunteers to help UHCL in their processing of archive donations to the JSC Collection within the UHCL Archives. Given the limited staff at UHCL, they are always in the need of people to help in sorting, cataloging, and filing these important contributions so that they can be readily available to researchers. In addition, the NAL has established a relationship with the onsite JSC History Office along with the JSC Historical Preservation Officer and onsite JSC Archivist to assist them as needed. If you have an interest in volunteering for these efforts to preserve JSC History, please contact the NAL Lead for this volunteer effort, Greg Blackburn, at greg.blackburn@gmail.com and he will setup a short training session with UHCL enabling you to participate in this activity or provide you more information about volunteer opportunities. Any number of hours of volunteering would be greatly appreciated by these organizations.

How to donate material to the UHCL JSC Archives

The UHCL Archive is always seeking your personal papers, books, photographs, brochures, correspondence, drawings, newsletters, journals, design, meeting minutes, and any personal mementos for inclusion in the JSC History Collection. No preparation on your part is required beyond making delivery of your items – the archive staff will receive your donation and will carefully systematize your donation to keep it in a preserved form that can be accessed by historians and researchers along with your family and descendants in the future. To schedule a donation or to find out more information about the Archive you can contact the them directly via email at archives@uhcl.edu or you can call 281-283-3962.

Additional online information about the UHCL Archives & Special Collections can be found at https://www.uhcl.edu/library/uhcl-archives.

The UHCL Archive located within the Alfred R. Neumann Library in the Bayou Building is free and open to the public M-F 8:30am – 4:30pm.

How to Donate Money to the NAL-UHCL Endowment Campaign

The goal of the endowment is to raise a minimum of $25,000 in five years which would then be used to forever pay for a student intern(s) to work alongside the UHCL Archivists to formally support the growing JSC Collection. This 2020 NAL gift of $2,200 to UHCL also included monies to pay for a student intern for the Fall and Spring semesters in parallel to the endowment fund raising activity. This intern will augment NAL volunteers that are already helping the UHCL Archive given their limited resources and the high volume of donations of NASA related information.

If you would like to be part of this unique opportunity, you can give directly to the endowment via the Give to UHCL website at:

https://giving.uh.edu/uhcl/

Once there just scroll down and click on “Search Funds” which is to the right of “Top Funds” and then type NASA in the “Search for a Designation” box and you will see our endowment pop up. Click on the endowment name and then enter the amount of your gift in the next box. Once completed, click on the “+ Add Gift” and then select the frequency of your gift, e.g. one time, annual, etc. Click on “Next” and follow the instructions on the details to make payment. After you have made your gift you will receive an official gift receipt in the mail from UHCL which will list the gift designation and the amount given which can be used for tax purposes. You will also receive a email confirming the gift but it will not detail the gift.

Giving is not limited to NAL members so please inform friends and family about this endowment so they can help in preserving this unique and compelling history!