In February, we welcomed two new students to the internship program. Stephen "Kyle" Staubs and Zachary Garver are both students in Shepherd University's History Program. Both Kyle and Zach began their internships by working on our digitization project with Senator Robert C. Byrd's extensive clipping scrapbooks collection. There are over 150 large scrapbooks containing press clippings, magazine articles, and other ephemera which provide a timeline view of Senator Byrd's life and career from his earliest days in the West Virginia State Legislature in the 1940s until his final years in the U.S. Senate. Zach and Kyle both worked on digitizing the physical scrapbooks, which can be a delicate process due to the age of the books and the rapid deterioration of newsprint. Using the center's flatbed scanner, Zach and Kyle scanned each page, sometimes multiple times to capture all of the articles affixed to them.

By Jody Brumage

​While searching for records in our collections for submission to the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress' The Great Society Congress digital exhibit last week, we uncovered documents detailing a unique legislative achievement for West Virginia's Congressman Harley O. Staggers, Sr. The discovery was very timely since the documents record Congressman Staggers' role in securing passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, establishing nation-wide standards for the observance of daylight-saving time. The act marked the first effort by Congress to address the complex issue which plagued several major U.S. industries and caused confusion for anyone traveling across the nation's time zones. 

On Friday, March 4, 2016, we welcomed West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant and her staff to the Byrd Center for lunch and a tour of the archives during her recent trip to the Eastern Panhandle. The Secretary and her staff were introduced to several new programs at the center including our upcoming traveling exhibit debuting at the Byrd Center in late April.

During our lunch meeting, the secretary shared her stories about the complex matter of filling West Virginia's U.S. Senate seat following the death of Senator Byrd in the summer of 2010 and how the state coped with the passing of its longtime champion in Congress. 

​Since the 1950s, Congress has debated and periodically enacted legislation to limit the causes and impact of air pollution in the United States. The first successful bill to address this issue was the Air Pollution Control Act, passed in 1955. A subsequent bill, the Clean Air Act of 1963, expanded the government’s efforts to control emissions and provided funding for the U.S. Public Health Service to conduct research. Four years later in 1967, Congress again debated a bill to further expand the government’s control over emissions, and the effort was led by two members of West Virginia’s congressional delegation: Senator Jennings Randolph and Representative Harley O. Staggers, Sr.