Once they open back up, I plan on going to the National Archives in College Park, MD to pull some USAAF records that are only available in the paper format.
How does the self-service scan process work? Do I need to bring anything with me, such as a laptop to process the scans, or are the provided scanners self contained? Also, how are the scans delivered? Do I need to bring a flash drive?
Can I request to have records pulled and ready, or do I have to wait for a designated pull time? I'm trying to make my trip as smooth and efficient as possible.
Any tips would be appreciated.
Since you're allowed very little, not much. This is a useful list of what's allowed in.
I've actually never been to the College Park campus, but I have done research in several Presidential libraries and the Reading Room in DC, and what I'd tell you is that it's a very strict process in terms of what you're allowed inside - everything else you bring with you goes into a locker since they really try to prevent anything that could be used for theft like a case, and the copies you make are on blue paper to distinguish them from archival material.
By and large you can photograph or record freely (without flash!) and phones are great for that. If you want a laptop in, that's fine too, but I'd check with them to find out what scanners they have to download software in advance unless you want to bring your own - and if it's the latter, they only allow flat bed scanners. Also, no idea if this has changed (it's been a long time), but the cards for the copy machines at the places I went used to be cash only.
As far as pulls, I don't think they prepull, but they're pretty efficient especially if they're not busy. One trick is to submit a request for your next cart while you're still working on the first one, and in some cases they'll leave the carts out overnight. Of course, there's also a cart limit and if someone else is working on the same thing that you are you'll have to try to reach a compromise on when each of you gets it (it's certainly a unique way to discover you've got competition!)
Anyway, once they're open my best advice would be to call them to find out the current requirements. I suspect a lot of things are going to be pretty funky for a while, like the part about hand sanitizer, so definitely check in before you go.
/u/Caffarelli has written a handy guide titled HOW TO DO YOURSELF AN ARCHIVES RESEARCH, designed for US government archives. /u/Georgy_K_Zhukov and others have written a guide to retrieving military records.
/u/commiespaceinvader has written about the challenges of using an archive for research.
EDIT: spelled the Marshal's name wrong