Activities

My main activity was processing a 17-box collection from former Iowa legislator and Sioux City businessman, Leonard C. Andersen.

I was tasked with organizing and filing all the materials that he and his family donated to the museum. I began with seventeen boxes of papers crammed into random folders which dated from 1948 to the 1990's. My first step was to unbox all the papers and sort them roughly by date. I used the timeframes of his legislative sessions to guide my preliminary sorting. It was an adventure to open each new box and unpack it. Some of my favorite discoveries were invitations to presidential inaugurations and letters from current U.S. senators when they were first running for office.

Once I got the thousands of papers somewhat organized, I started my organization with his campaign materials, dividing them by election cycle. This was good practice for when I started going through each legislative session next. With huge piles separated by years, I dug deeper into each one to figure out the main topics from that session. Most of my time was spent sorting those topics--such as agriculture, education, and taxes--into smaller bill topics. As I placed each topic in a temporary folders, I wrote down the detailed contents of each so they could later be placed into permanent archival storage and inventoried properly. I continued this process, sorting the papers for each session of the Iowa General Assembly into more specific levels.

With each new session I tackled, the themes were pretty consistent but it was always interesting to read the correspondence with his constituents to see their opinions. Certain topics like education and the Iowa Public Employee's Retirement System, which Andersen pioneered, got more coverage than others. It was neat to see behind the desk of a politician, especially back in the 1960s and 70s. It made me wonder what documents current politicians have in their files and who will one day be sorting through their mail at a museum.

When my internship finished, I had the bulk of items organized and roughly documented, so I turned over the project to the museum. Down the road, it will be official label, inventoried, and stored away for safe keeping and research access. The Leonard Andersen papers will become part of the giant archival collection at the Sioux City Public Museum.