Purpose
Serving as the Senate's institutional memory, the Historical Office collects and provides information on important events, precedents, dates, statistics, and historical comparisons of current and past Senate activities for use by members and staff, the media, scholars, and the general public. The office advises senators and committees on cost-effective disposition of their non-current office files, assists researchers seeking access to Senate records, and maintains automated information databases detailing locations of former members' papers.
It conducts oral history interviews with retired senior Senate staff and keeps extensive biographical and bibliographical information on former senators. Many of these interviews are available on the Senate website. A collection of more than thirty thousand Senate-related photographs and other illustrations is available for research and publication use. The Historical Office and its staff has also produced numerous publications through the years, covering all aspects of Senate history.
The president pro tempore of the United States Senate is the second-highest-ranking official of the United States Senate, after the vice president. According to Article One, Section Three of the United States Constitution, the vice president of the United States is the president of the Senate, and the Senate must choose a president pro tempore to act in the vice president's absence.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a public policy research institute of the United States Congress. Operating within the Library of Congress, it works primarily and directly for members of Congress and their committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis. CRS is sometimes known as Congress' think tank due to its broad mandate of providing research and analysis on all matters relevant to national policymaking.
The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (Bioguide) is a biographical dictionary of all present and former members of the United States Congress and its predecessor, the Continental Congress. Also included are Delegates from territories and the District of Columbia and Resident Commissioners from the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
The secretary of the Senate is an officer of the United States Senate. The secretary supervises an extensive array of offices and services to expedite the day-to-day operations of that body. The office is somewhat analogous to that of the clerk of the United States House of Representatives.
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is dedicated to overseeing the United States Intelligence Community—the agencies and bureaus of the federal government of the United States that provide information and analysis for leaders of the executive and legislative branches. The Committee was established in 1976 by the 94th Congress.
The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Index is updated daily online and published monthly. At the end of a session of Congress, the daily editions are compiled in bound volumes constituting the permanent edition. Chapter 9 of Title 44 of the United States Code authorizes publication of the Congressional Record.
Herman Eugene Talmadge was an American politician who served as governor of Georgia in 1947 and from 1948 to 1955 and as a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1957 to 1981. A Democrat, Talmadge served during a time of political transition, both in Georgia and nationally. He began his career as a staunch segregationist known for his opposition to civil rights, including supporting legislation that would have closed public schools to prevent desegregation. By the later stages of his career, following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act, which gave substance to the Fifteenth Amendment enacted nearly one hundred years before, and increased African American voter participation, Talmadge, like many other Southern politicians of that period, had modified his views on race. His life eventually encapsulated the emergence of his native Georgia from entrenched white supremacy into a multiracial political culture where many white voters regularly elect Black and other non-white candidates to the U.S. Congress and Georgia General Assembly.
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The National Security Archive is an investigative journalism center, open government advocate, international affairs research institute, and the largest repository of declassified U.S. documents outside the federal government. The National Security Archive has spurred the declassification of more than 15 million pages of government documents by being the leading non-profit user of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), filing a total of more than 70,000 FOIA and declassification requests in its over 35+ years of history.
Arthur E. "Scotty" Scott was the United States Senate's first photo-historian. He was a professional photographer in Washington, D.C., from 1934 to 1976.
William Lloyd Scott was an American Republican politician from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He served in both the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate.
The clerk of the United States House of Representatives is an officer of the United States House of Representatives, whose primary duty is to act as the chief record-keeper for the House.
The United States Army Center of Military History (CMH) is a directorate within the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. The Institute of Heraldry remains within the Office of the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Army. The center is responsible for the appropriate use of history and military records throughout the United States Army. Traditionally, this mission has meant recording the official history of the army in both peace and war, while advising the army staff on historical matters. CMH is the flagship organization leading the Army Historical Program.
Richard Allan Baker was the first Historian of the United States Senate, serving through August 2009. He directed the United States Senate Historical Office from the time of its creation in 1975.
Title 2 of the United States Code outlines the role of Congress in the United States Code.
Donald A. Ritchie is Historian Emeritus of the United States Senate.
The Attending Physician of the United States Congress is the physician responsible for the medical welfare of the members of the United States Congress and the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center is a nonpartisan institution devoted to teaching and research related to the United States Congress and, more broadly, to strengthening representative democracy through engaged and informed citizens. Located at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma the Center is a living tribute to the ideals, leadership, and accomplishments of Carl Albert - native Oklahoman, University of Oklahoma alumnus, Rhodes Scholar and 46th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, also known as The Pearl Harbor Committee, was a committee of members of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives formed during the 79th United States Congress after World War II to investigate the causes of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and possible preventive measures against future attacks. The resolution for the formation of this committee passed in the Senate on September 6, 1945, and in the House on September 11, 1945. The final report of the committee issued on June 20, 1946.
Congressional archives consist of records and personal papers that document the history and activities of the United States Congress. The National Archives and Records Administration’s Center for Legislative Archives collects and preserves the official administrative and legislative records of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. The personal papers of individual senators and representatives, broadly called congressional collections, are the private property of members of Congress. Many members choose to donate their papers to repositories where their records are preserved and made available to the public.
