A Treasure Trove of Files

Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series ​

After a brief survey of the 2.9 million electronic files in Senator Byrd’s papers, two things became quite apparent:

1. 2.6 million of those files were images and PDFs of microfilm rolls and

2. Of the remaining ~300,000 files, there is a wide and richly diverse set of records!

Identified file types include word processing documents (usually WordPad), image files, audio files, databases, and even archived web pages. Below we highlight a few of these records to give you a better understanding of the content that can be found in this congressional collection.

First an image file (most of these were well-organized chronologically):

Senator Byrd attends a hearing in August of 1982.

There are also thousands of interesting documents, including drafts of speeches, memos, and reports:

We have more than 600 audio clips of Senator Byrd speaking on a variety of subjects, including Vietnam: 

And more photos from shortly after the Senator passed in office, documenting the layout of his hundreds of framed items and scrapbooks:

A view of 311 Hart, Senator Byrd’s main DC office.

Some of the hundreds of newspaper clipping scrapbooks that Senator Byrd’s staff compiled.

All though we have hundreds of thousands of files to process yet, we will be opening sections of these electronic records as we finish them. We know these records will enhance the research done on Senator Byrd and look forward to helping you navigate them here at the archive.