About Us: The Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies

Mission Statement | About Our Staff

Exterior of the Byrd Center Building

The Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies is a private, nonpartisan, and nonprofit educational organization with facilities on the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The mission of the Center is to promote a better understanding of the United States Congress, both historically and in a contemporary setting. The Center’s research and programs focus on the history of the U. S. Congress and the Constitution, civic education, and the meaning of representative democracy.

The Center’s work places Congress in a historical and biographical context. We encourage historians, journalists, political scientists, and constitutional scholars to draw on the historical records of Congress and the records of individual members of the House and Senate to gain new insights into the workings of the legislative branch of government and its relationship with the Executive and Judicial branches of government under the U. S. Constitution.

To carry out this mission the Center will conduct seminars, workshops, teacher’s institutes, public lectures, conferences and teleconferences on a wide variety of topics and issues designed to meet the overall objectives of improved public understanding of the legislative process. The Center will serve a broad public as well as members of Congress, congressional staff, educators from primary and secondary schools, institutions of higher learning, the media, and visiting scholars and parliamentarians from foreign countries, especially those from emerging democracies.

The Reading Room

The Center plays an important role on the campus of Shepherd University by offering the use of its facilities to a wide range of campus and public programs. The Center is housed in a wing of the newly expanded Scarborough Library and is an integral part of the intellectual life of the campus and the surrounding area.

The Center is also a modern archival facility which holds the rich and extensive congressional papers of Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. Other collections currently being processed include the papers of former members of the U. S. House of Representatives from West Virginia, Harley Staggers and Harley Staggers, Jr.