An electrical engineer and senior editor for Aviation Week and Space Technology, Philip Klass began investigating UFOs in 1966 after participating in a panel discussion on the subject for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). From that time forward Klass has investigated UFO sightings in an effort to find a credible prosaic explanation, and became one of the most widely recognized UFO "debunkers." A founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), serving on the Executive Council and the UFO subcommittee, Klass has authored seven books and numerous articles on UFOs, including the Skeptics UFO Newsletter in 1989. In the early 1970s, he became interested in space based weapons, and began collecting material related to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) for a possible book. The Klass Collection relate to his forty-plus years of investigating UFO sightings, and includes correspondence with many of the leading UFOlogists, both pro and con. The collection contains case files, subject files, and correspondence. In addition, Klass' SDI material is included.

A physicist with the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Walter Goad became interested in molecular biology in the mid-1960s, devoting nearly all of his research to the analysis, storage and retrieval of information relating to nucleic acid sequences by the early 1970s. He was among the founders of GenBank, the world's first nucleic acid database, and was influential in the development of computational techniques for the analysis of DNA sequences. In the late 1980s, he served on the steering committee overseeing the establishment of the Human Genome Project. The Goad Papers relate primarily to the establishment and early operation of GenBank, the early phases of the Human Genome Project, and, more generally, to Goad's role as godfather of the new field of bioinformatics.