By Ray Smock

I was pleased to participate in a panel on the State of Congressional History at the annual meeting of the Society for History in the Federal Government, which met here at the Byrd Center last April. My colleagues on the panel were Richard McCulley of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives, the Senate Historian, Don Ritchie, and the House Historian, Matt Wasniewski. All of us spend a great deal of time thinking about Congressional history, the progress we have made and the long road ahead to preserve and disseminate the rich history of the United States Congress.
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I had the great honor to serve as the first official historian of the House many moons ago, and that experience opened my eyes to how little the public knows of the history of this part of government and how little many of the people elected to serve there know of this 226 year history of this great ongoing experiment in representative democracy. Fortunately for the past 30+ years both the Senate and House established dynamic small offices to carry out the role of being keepers of Congress’s institutional history and to provide outreach to the public and the press on matters of Senate and House history.