The Virginia Academy of Science Records includes VAS publications dating from 1939-present. These include such in-house works as Review of the First Ten Years of the Research Committee (1939), Announcement and a Challenge (1946?), and the Future (1950). The Academy has also published periodicals throughout its history. Claytonia was the first VAS journal (1934-1939), followed by the Virginia Journal of Science (1940-1943) and the Virginia Journal of Science, New Series (VJS, 1950-present). The Flora Committee of the Botany Section also periodically publishes a newsletter which became known as Jeffersonia in 1980; the records contain only scattered issues (11) from 1969-1970, 1980. The Academy Records also has copies of directories, brochures, and membership fliers which the VAS has published since about 1946.

The VAS Records also includes manuscript and published versions of various Academy histories; especially interesting are the early versions by Ivey Foreman Lewis (first VAS president) and E. C. L. Miller. The collection contains quite extensive records of the work of Isabel Boggs and George Jeffers to coordinate the efforts of members to record the Academy’s past as well as the resulting master’s thesis of Harry J. Staggers, History of the Virginia Academy of Science, 1925-1927 (College of William and Mary, 1966). This history of the VAS appeared in the Winter 1968 issue of the Virginia Journal of Science and in Spring 1973 the Journal carried the more recent VAS history, 1948-1972, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Virginia Academy of Science charter.

The early records of the Academy can be attributed largely to the efforts of E. C. L. Miller who was the only officer (secretary and treasurer) to serve continuously, 1924-1949. During these years, he corresponded widely for the entire Academy, maintained committee reports, compiled the yearly programs, and saw that formal records were published annually in the Proceedings. The strength of the VAS Records lies largely in the historic intuition of such officers, section heads, or committee chairs who maintained the files. Some files are much more complete than others. The early records of the Research Committee, for example, contain applications, papers submitted for consideration for the annual award, and records of the efforts of J. Shelton Horsley to raise an endowment to support these awards, which were later named in his honor. More recent files are limited to minutes and annual reports. The Geology Section has perhaps the most complete set of records of section activities, especially during the leadership of William M. McGill. The activities of other committees and sections are often preserved in the Council’s records, however, while the Proceedings through 1966 and/or the annual meeting files often contain reports of committees and sections.

The Academy Records also includes correspondence, report, and minutes of section and of ad hoc and standing committees, annual financial statements, photographs and clippings, by-laws, and constitutions, records of special projects such as the visiting scientists program (supported by National Science Foundation grants), the Virginia Institute for Scientific Research and the Virginia Museum of Science.