Idaho State University

Scope and Content

The Stallings Collection was originally received by the Eli M. Oboler Library at Idaho State University in 1992. It contained the papers of former Congressman Richard H. Stallings, including legislative files, correspondence, and constituent casework. In 2006, Mr. Stallings donated additional material to the collection including publications, memorabilia, and his papers from his service as United States Nuclear Waste Negotiator.

The date range of the collection, including each of the series, spans the period from Mr. Stallings' first campaign for Congress in 1984 until his exit from the nuclear waste negotiation agency in 1995. The bulk of materials contained herein fall between the beginning of Stallings' service in Congress in 1985 and his departure in late 1992.

The types of material contained within the Stallings Collection vary depending on their origins.

Most folders within Series I, The Washington Papers, contain materials that fall into seven categories:

1. Government publications: publications by state and federal agencies, including research services and the Congress.
2. Congressional correspondence: i.e. "Dear Colleague" letters or personal letters from members of Congress related to specific legislation and/or events.
3. Publications of special interest groups, including newsletters, journals, news releases, brochures, position papers, etc.
4. Copies, both photocopied and original printings, of materials published by newspapers and magazines.
5. Correspondence from constituents and special interest groups.
6. Organizational publications of the Democratic Party.
7. Staff notes and memos

The level of organization of the original materials was minimal. At the box level, the materials from the Washington office appeared to have little or no order (chronological, topical or otherwise). At the folder level, there was subject-ordering, but it was lax and inconsistent.

Out of respect for archival provenance, the original ordering of the Washington materials was largely preserved. Documents were rarely removed from folders and relocated and the overall contents of boxes were seldom changed. Items within folders, however, were sometimes rearranged, either according to chronology or subject matter, or document type. More extensive reordering of the materials was eschewed, not only because of provenance considerations, but also because the collection's inventory and index would be available in electronic format and provide exceptionally detailed subject access for researchers.

With respect to Series II, III, IV, and V, the District Office Series, material has been arranged by category, i.e. legislative files, constituent casework, correspondence, speeches, newsletters, and press releases. Each of the district offices had maintained its own files and was responsible for their transfer to this repository; the variety of materials contained within each of the respective office papers and their organization reflect this fact.

The constituent casework materials represent work done by Stallings and his staff on behalf of individual Idaho constituents contending with the red tape and bureaucracy of federal agencies. These materials were sampled, rather than retained in their entirety. Also, because correspondence was mixed in with casework, the former was removed and transferred to the respective office's correspondence files. Due to the policy implemented by Stallings' staff to send all agriculture-related casework to the Twin Falls district office, casework files for Stallings' Twin Falls district office are substantially larger in size than the casework files of the Pocatello and Idaho Falls offices. The Boise district office files do not contain any constituent casework, but do contain military academy nomination files because the Boise office was solely responsible for military academy nominations. The nominations contained within those files refer to nominees who were both nominated by Congressman Stallings and accepted by the military academies (U.S. Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, U.S. Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point). (More information about staff responsibilities and activities can be found in Series VII, the Staff Files.)

Series VI, VII, VIII, and IX each requires an additional note on its status within the collection and its organization.

Series VI, the Audio/Visual Collection, is a series of campaign materials originally found within Series I, the Washington Papers. These materials were removed, transferred from their original format-either VHS or audiocassette-to a consistent format of DVD or CD, and placed in one location as a separate series.

Series VII, the Staff Files , consists of materials removed from previous locations within each of the office files, that pertain to the daily operations and personnel policies of Congressman Stallings' staff. These materials outline the distribution of tasks among the staff in both the district offices and the Washington office, the organization of the congressional page and internship programs, information on federal law regulating the political activities of employees of the United States government, and the qualifications of many of Stallings' staffers.

The series identified as Series VIII : Constituent Service Reports & Policy , consists of staff-created reports on the successes and failures of Stallings constituent service operation; various constituent service forms; and information on policies pertinent to the handling of specific constituent casework (i.e. contacts and information relative to federal agencies such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Social Security Administration, Bureau of Veterans Affairs, Internal Revenue Service, and others).

Series IX, the Nuclear Waste Negotiation Papers, are separate from the congressional papers both in arrangement and in content. They originate from Stallings' service as a presidential appointee at the head of an independent federal agency responsible for the storage of nuclear waste, and were received in December of 2006. The Nuclear Waste Negotiation Papers are ordered chronologically.

The finding aids for the Stallings Collection include an inventory with a detailed account of each item contained within each folder and a searchable database with controlled subject terms and date ranges for each of the folders.

The inventory includes the following information to aid in the identification and retrieval of relevant materials:

1. Identification, whenever possible, of the source of the document, and its type.
2. Frequent recording of the dates of composition/publication/issuance of the documents.
3. Identification of text that is quoted from the document through the use of quotation marks.
4. Identification of titles of published documents by the use of italics.
5. Inclusion of other descriptive words and phrases as needed to identify the topic addressed by the document.

Chronology