Prior to the NAI's move to Rotterdam, a placement list was made in 1992 of the material that had arrived in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, such as travel sketches and pre-war (presentation) drawings. After the transfer of the bureau archives, a list of the (summary) project data was made in 1992 from a clapper that came along. In 1999 the previous archivist, Johan Jacobs, repackaged, organized and described the bureau archives in a preliminary inventory. He also worked with Mrs. Staal in late 1998 to select from the personal archive donated by Staal and made a placement list of the material.

The repackaging of the bureau archives that had originally come in boxes, tubes and unpackaged resulted in: 102 roll boxes containing 378 rolls of drawings. The number of drawings per roll - ranging from sketch to detail drawing - ranged from about 3 to about 30 drawings.
In addition, there are approximately 225 archive boxes and 20 flat boxes containing project-related material such as project administration and correspondence, drawing prints, documentation, correspondence of a personal nature and free work. Finally, there are about 50 portfolios of various sizes containing design and presentation drawings. The archive covers some 75 linear meters.

One access to Staal's desk archive was the aforementioned desk clapper (request no. d 64). In it the names of the clients and/or the project, the year and sometimes the location are listed alphabetically on system cards, indicating in which tubes or boxes the work was located.
The given dating in the folders is not always correct as the descriptions of the material revealed, also the number of designs is incomplete: of the pre-war projects, only seven are listed. The remaining pre-war works are listed on a 'chronological works list' drawn up afterwards by Staal, found in the archive, from 1929 to 1948 (application number d 63).Staal did not use a works list with corresponding numbering. Instead of a work number, location and client are indicated on the drawings, usually the drawings have been given a serial number (sometimes the same) within a project. Not always the designation of the project, such as location, client or the name of the (sub)plan is careful. This is due, in addition to poor bureau administration in a number of cases, to the fact that the demarcation of a construction site in large projects was not always clear at first, sometimes projects received a different client/owner or even a different (street) name during construction.
Only a few drawings of a number of projects are present; it is not clear whether the design activities were stopped or the drawings were lost. The small firm Staal regularly outsourced drawing work for large assignments. This may be a reason for the lack of drawings.
Not all designs were realized, of some it is unclear whether they were executed. The contemporary administration is unclear on that point.
It is striking that documents relating to Staal's education and studies as well as the organization and administration of his architectural firm are scarcely represented in the archive. Of the two HBO assignments on the 'chronological works list', no documents are present anymore; for the sake of overview, they are mentioned in the project files.

The archival material is divided into the following categories:
I Professional practice
II Prix de Rome
III Free work
IV Professional related pieces and publications
V Inheritance J.F. Staal
Appendix Bibliography

ad.I Professional practice includes the (scarce) documents about the organization of the architectural firm A. Staal BV; the project files with designs, written documents, photographs and documentation; and the listing of designs of which no documents are (any longer) present in the archives.
ad.Il Included are the materials related to this award and travel. Namely: travel letters and (personal) correspondence, manuscripts and articles with drafts; travel sketches; drawings and maps of (Dutch) squares, travel maps and guides and the travel photographs.
ad. III Under free work are included all documents relating to non-project related designs, sketches and drawings.
ad. IV Under professional related pieces and publications, pieces of various kinds are described in chronological order. They have not been further subdivided into sub-chapters because that would give an appearance of systematics that did not characterize the archival formation at Staal's home. All documents were formed, received or collected by Staal. It concerns: correspondence, personalia, documents concerning (participation in) committees and the like, manuscripts and own publications, publications of others about own work about (the work of) others
ad. V The J.F. Staal estate includes all J.F. Staal-related documents found in the archives of A. Staal. This includes correspondence; designs and related documents; articles by and about J.F. Staal; photographs of his work.
ad. appendix The appendix contains a list of publications by Staal about his own work and the work of others and a list of publications by others about Staal's work.