COMMITTEE RECORDS Series Overview,, 1960-1981 (bulk 1969 - 1980).

In December 2006, 194 cubic feet of Senate Committee records found in the HAW Papers were returned to the Senate. An additional four cubic feet were returned in February 2009. The bulk of these belonged to the Committee on Labor & Human Resources, though Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs material was also included. COMMITTEE RECORDS consists of copies of documents selected for retention from among those returned to the Senate.

The retained copies are either original duplicates or photocopies made by the processing archivist of documents found in the Committee files. Photocopies made by the archivist are not noted as such.

In selecting documents to photocopy for retention, an emphasis was placed on staff memos directed to HAW that included analyses, recommendations, background briefings, questions for hearing witnesses, agendas, programs, and other materials documenting the staff perspectives underlying HAW's legislative activity. Draft staff reports, field notes, memos among staff members, internal staff analyses, and other materials documenting staff work and Committee deliberations were copied. HAW speeches, statements, floor remarks, substantive correspondence to other senators or government officials, and other materials illustrating HAW's positions on issues were copied. Some material not fitting the above categories was copied if needed for context of the staff documents.

Less selectivity was applied to retaining duplicates found in the records; generally, any duplicates of documents with substantive content were retained. Among the materials in this category are carbon copies of Committee correspondence, advance copies of hearing testimony, transcripts of hearings, prints of bills and fact sheets, and government and private publications. The Committee files contained a relatively small amount of duplicate material, however, so the extent to which these various materials were available for retention was limited and inconsistent across the series.

Key themes documented in COMMITTEE RECORDS include mine safety legislation of the 1970s and the related mining disasters influencing the legislation; the 1978 Senate floor debate over labor law reform; the multi-employer pension plan amendments proposed for ERISA in the late 1970s; HAW's initiatives on behalf of migratory workers in the early 1960s; HAW's efforts to expand educational opportunities for handicapped children; and other health and education legislation.

Series Overview: Organization

COMMITTEE RECORDS is a compilation of documents drawn from a diversity of Committee files by the processing archivist. The original files included those of Committee and Sub-Committee counsels, professional staff members, and temporary project staff; central Committee files and reference files of individual staffers; and unlabeled files of obscure purpose, unfoldered papers, and well-labeled folders from pre-numbered filing structures. Because most of this material was unorganized to a significant extent, and the amount of material retained was small relative to the whole, the organization of COMMITTEE RECORDS was imposed by the processing archivist. The series is organized into six topical sub-series with a seventh "Various" category that includes material that either cuts across the other sub-series (e.g., budget, Executive Committee minutes, correspondence on multiple issues) or did not fit into the other topical sub-series. The sub-series are:

Within each sub-series, the folders are arranged by subject descriptions imposed by the processing archivist. To a limited extent, these descriptions are based on the original folder descriptions. Generally, though, new descriptions were applied by the archivist because: a) much material was unfoldered or was in a folder with no label and/or b) the specific items selected for retention were not well-described by the original folder description.

Because the bulk of the Committee records found in the collection were not copied for retention, the few documents retained can no longer be viewed within their original context. To compensate somewhat for this, "Reference Notes" are included in this Inventory in an effort to provide information about each retained document's original context. These Reference Notes and directions on their use are found in Appendix C of this Inventory. The Notes are also included in the collection, in the first folder of the COMMITTEE RECORDS series. All folder descriptions in the series include a reference number (Ref#) for use with these Reference Notes.