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John Chester Culver (D-Iowa)1932: Born in Rochester, MN; raised in Cedar Rapids, IA

1964: Wins election as to Congress from Iowa’s 2nd District

1965-1975: Serves in House of Representatives

1974: Elected to U.S. Senate from Iowa

1975-1981: Serves single term as Senator

1980: Defeated for reelection by Chuck Grassley

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John Chester Culver (D-Iowa)House Committees and Subcommittees:Foreign Relations --Africa --Foreign Economic Policy --Inter-American Affairs Government Operations --Intergovernmental Ops --State Dept. Organization

Un-American Activities

Select Committee on Committees of the House

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John Chester Culver (D-Iowa)Senate Committees and Sub-Committees:Armed Services --General Legislation --Research and Development

Environment and Public Works --Environmental Pollution --Nuclear Regulation --Resource Protection

Judiciary --Admin. Practice and Procedure --Antitrust and Monopoly --Criminal Laws and Procedures --Juvenile Delinquency

Select Committee on Small Business

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The Papers of John C. Culver

•233 boxes (over 180 linear feet)deposited at University of Iowa

•Of these, 157 contain JCC’s correspondence to and from constituents

•Essentially unprocessed, correspondence difficult to access effectively

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The Papers of John C. Culver• Initially ‘organized’ by JCC’s House and Senate offices using multiple filing systems

--Alphabetical by recipient; date sent; subject; relevant committee; CMS code number • Correspondence Management System (CMS) used by Senate not readily comprehensible without master code list [which we don’t have!]

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What To Do?

• Status quo unworkable

• Why not a simple, massive deaccessioning? --General agreement among congressional archivists in historical value of constituent correspondence

--SAA recommends review of each correspondence type on own merits, and disposing of bulk (i.e. form letters)

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What To Do?• Good Rule of Thumb: Use a model already proven effective in practice!

• The James O. Eastland Papers (U of Mississippi) Experience (Leigh McWhite)

--Papers arrived in disarray, disorganized, multiple filing systems

--McWhite and her team broke papers apart and reordered them into a usable fashion, essentially conducting item-level collection sort

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What To Do?• Recommendations for Culver Correspondence 1. 2 Processing Stages – first the House correspondence, then the Senate

2. Review correspondence, using subject headings that most letters bear, to create a master topic list

3. Divide letters into topics, and within that division, by date.

4. Destroy form letters after retaining one copy of each.

5. Follow SAA recommendations for disposal of certain letter types (Congratulations/Condolence; Routine Requests)

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What To Do?

• Process will be long, but…..

• Rewards for UI and for researchers will be great!

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