Shortly after Senator Patrick Leahy’s retirement from the Senate in 2023, three ̽̽ congressional papers archivists began organizing his robust collection and preparing it for researchers to access. The project is funded by a $2.5 million Preservation Partnership Grant from the United States Senate Historical Office. The first two of 11 components of the collection—travel and campaign—are now available for public access through online discovery aids and by appointment at the ̽̽ Silver Special Collections Library.
“We are thrilled that one of the giants of the Senate has entrusted us with his papers, which chronicle nearly half a century of personal and institutional history,” said ̽̽ Dean of Libraries Bryn Geffert. “Senator Leahy’s papers represent a tremendous addition to our Libraries’ holdings and will draw scholars from around the world.”
The true value of this material is for those doing research about political events and the legacy of Leahy’s historic career. Researchers can use the Leahy Papers to explore national and international political affairs as well as local issues affecting everyday Vermonters such as Lake Champlain preservation, organic farming, rural development, and more. “The campaign series can show how issues important to Vermonters have changed over time,” said congressional papers archivist Sally Blanchard-O'Brien. “It can also show researchers how campaigning and Democratic party strategy has evolved over time.”
How to interact with the Leahy papers
Descriptions of the items in the now-available series can be accessed through an . A dropdown list of contents from each series can be found in the bottom right corner of the guide under “campaign and political records” and “travel records.” Although viewers won’t see the documents themselves within the guide, they can contact the Silver Special Collections Library to make an appointment to view requested items in person. Upon booking an appointment, the requested materials will be sent to Silver Special Collections Library from a secure, off-site storage facility. At the appointment time, a library staff member will pull the requested materials for viewing.
About the collection and project
In 2023, the archivists in charge of the project, Shir Bach, Sally Blanchard-O'Brien and Erica Donnis, began the daunting task of sorting through the nearly 3,000 boxes of materials and 20 terabytes of digital files in the Leahy Papers. The collection documents the work of Senator Leahy’s office and staffers over the course of his career in the Senate, including everything from menus at state dinners to constituent correspondence, from legislative policy research to campaign posters. The campaign records document Leahy’s eight Senate campaigns as well as his participation in state and national Democratic Party activities. The travel files capture Leahy’s congressional delegation trips (CODELs) and other travel undertaken during his time in the Senate.
“When the senator was in office, his staff archivists worked with their colleagues to set aside files with long-term value for his archives,” said Donnis. “Our job is to take those paper and digital records, group them together to reflect different aspects of the senator’s work, and identify the specific employees who contributed to them as best we can.”
Looking into a box that had yet to be processed, Bach shared that stories can be gleaned by sorting through the contents of each box: “We’ve gotten a sense of each staffer’s idiosyncrasies and working styles,” he said. “The scheduler’s files that [Blanchard-O'Brien] is inventorying are an interesting example; he was dealing with a huge volume of material and would stuff his folders about four inches wide.”
For the paper files, the team’s archival work consists of inventorying such boxes and categorizing the materials by topical groups or series. The team then makes note of certain preservation tasks that need to be completed. This includes things like moving documents from acidic to nonacidic folders and boxes, buffering acidic newsprint with protective paper, splitting overstuffed folders into two, removing rusty paper clips and more.
Thanks to funds included in their grant, the archivists are lucky to welcome interns into the project every semester. “Our interns are getting experiential learning opportunities while performing critical work on the collection for us,” said Donnis. “It’s a win for both parties.”
Five ̽̽ undergraduate interns (among others), Katherine DiPalma, Abigail Shea, Clementine Finn, Melanie Mason, and Alison Jones, completed physical processing tasks for the archivists on the campaign and travel records. Since the interns worked alongside one another, a sense of community within the group quickly formed as they shared interesting findings and worked together to problem solve. Exploring the collection was the most exciting part of the internship, they shared.
Shea, a fourth-year political science/English major, said that her experience with the collection ended up more personal than she had expected. As she was processing materials from a campaign box, she stumbled across her great uncle’s name on a document (her uncle was a Vermont State representative in the 1980s and 90s). “It was the one box I worked on for the campaign series and I ended up finding a family member’s name,” she added. “It was a huge surprise.”
Jones, a fourth-year history major, recently celebrated her one-year anniversary interning with the collection. Despite seeing thousands of items from the senator’s travel collection, a souvenir clothing patch from Antarctica stuck with her as a symbol of just how widespread his travels were.
Donnis, Blanchard-O'Brien and Bach shared interest in a small, vertical notebook owned by Senator Leahy’s wife, Marcelle, from the travel series. The notebook was full of notes from a 1978 congressional delegation to China in which Marcelle took part.
Flipping through the book, it was clear that Marcelle took notes while on-the-go as some of her writing was upside down and sideways. When the archivists eventually showed Marcelle the notebook, she was pleased to revisit a trip that she remembered as an eye-opening experience.
Researchers worldwide are encouraged to browse the and contact Silver Special Collections Library to make arrangements to view the collection in person. Keep your eyes peeled for more announcements about the collection—the archivists expect to release additional components in batches, with the next release projected for the spring of 2026.
