Agency records suffer from the effects of several changes of administrators and office managers; subsequent inconsistencies are evident in the creation, arrangement and preservation of files. While some series are incomplete, they do possess research value. The files have been arranged by function, then by chronology.

Some ASPA records document significant trends in the service provider community, among these are files that record the development of public policy, initiation of workshops to confront problems common among service providing agencies, and joint lobbying efforts. The series of member surveys is also notable, particularly the swiftly conducted investigation of damage to AIDS organizations from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Among the correspondence is a letter dated Oct 14, 1992 from a Susan Penner which accompanies her report on a survey she conducted of 80 service agencies during 1991/92. Her results, including CEO's attitudes towards the consolidation of certain administrative functions among agencies, will be of interest to researchers studying administrative costs of providing AIDS-related services. In general, the correspondence files provide some information about the cultural and political interactions among administrators of AIDS agencies. Other notable contents include the three editions of the HIV Referral Directory (1990, 1992, 1993) as well as a survey of volunteers and a survey of 102 AIDS agencies and their positions on issues of public policy. A final file of interest is the remarkable "Housing Rights" document compiled by PWA Gary Harmon after he was denied federally subsidized housing in Oakland.

The records include planning and founding documents, minutes, correspondence, surveys, reports, workshop and training files, and publications.