Correspondence Files
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Scope and Contents
The papers of John C. Culver encompass his entire political career, starting with his first election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964 and ending with his last full year in office in the U.S. Senate in 1980. Papers comprise 187.5 linear feet and include legislative subject files, constituent correspondence, speeches, press releases, voting records, daily schedules, campaign/election materials, selected examples of Culver's community development and grant casework, materials relating to his House and Senate committee work, and various administrative files.
Early Senate correspondence is arranged by subject; from 1977 onwards the arrangement is numerical following a Senate-assigned Correspondence Management System. Included with these years are daily and monthly reports that link each correspondence number to the recipient?s name. House correspondence is arranged by subject.
Please Note: The Correspondence Management System was an automated system used for creating similar, but individualized paragraphs of letters of text which were merged with constituent names and addresses. Many Senate offices used the document number as a filing key: the number was composed of the Julian date, the CMS operator number, the type of correspondence (such as high volume, low volume, or manual entry), and a sequence number for a particular operator. Example: 5 (Year) 150 (date) 31 (Operator #) 001 (Type) (Sequence #).
The Culver Papers do not contain the document or paragraph library of form responses that served as indexes to the entire correspondence. Some years contain daily or weekly history reports that index the correspondence by topic, constituent name, or date.
Culver's Senate years are generally much more fully documented than his House terms ? the committee files and legislative subject files for the Senate are much fuller than those from the House, and the bulk of the photographs in the collection are from Culver's Senate career.
The papers in this collection are political in nature; they contain no personal papers of John Culver or his family.
Dates
- Creation: 1965-1981
Creator
- From the Collection: Culver, John (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
A few boxes contain personal financial information and may not be used by researchers without the express permission of John C. Culver. Otherwise, the collection is open for research.
Note on Committee Records: Committee files are part of the official records of the United States Congress and are governed by the rules of the House of Representatives or the Senate and the rules of the particular committee. Under the rules of the House, unpublished records are closed for at least 30 years; under Senate rules, unpublished records are closed for at least 20 years. Both the House and the Senate close for at least fifty years any records concerning national security, committee investigations, and the privacy of living persons. Committee records are not automatically opened at the expiration of the years stated above; instead, they remain close until declared open by the committee with appropriate jurisidiction over the records. To ensure that access to these records is allowed, contact the chief clerk of the appropriate committee.
This collection is stored at an offsite location. When requesting materials, please allow two business days for items to arrive at the Special Collections reading room.
Extent
From the Collection: 184.50 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Repository Details
Part of the University of Iowa Special Collections Repository
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242 IaU
319-335-5921
319-335-5900 (Fax)
lib-spec@uiowa.edu