Taking a Byte Out of the Senate: Reconsidering the Research Use of Correspondence and Casework Files

Authors

Naomi L. Nelson, Emory University

Publication Date

January 1997

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, a sustained discussion about the management of modem congressional collections first emerged in archival literature. Much of the debate over congressional collections during the intervening twenty years concerned the appropriate disposition of the voluminous constituent correspondence and casework files. Most archivists agreed that the casework and constituent correspondence records created and filed under the old paper-based system were bulky, hard to use, and of little research value.