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Heinz Senate Papers: Appraisal and Sampling Note

The original extent of the Heinz Senate Papers was reduced by approximately one-third during processing. General appraisal guidelines were used to remove duplicates, business cards, phone messages, envelopes, government publications, and other extraneous material. Due to availability in other libraries, excerpts from the Congressional Record and the Federal Register were removed and replaced with a note indicating the date and page numbers unless the documents contained annotations. Secondary sources, such as government publications and corporate reports that did not contain annotations, were removed after photocopying the cover and table of contents. However, due to limited availability and direct relevance to the Heinz Senate Papers, Committee Prints and Hearings were retained in their entirety.

As with many voluminous congressional collections, sampling techniques were used in processing the Heinz Senate Papers. Only representative samples of the contents of some files were saved, particularly correspondence in the Campaign Files and Office Administration subgroup. For example, the Senator received large quantities of congratulation letters for winning an election. In response, Senator Heinz sent many form letters to his constituents thanking them for their message and their participation in the campaign. When portions of the collection were sampled, a note was placed in the front of each sampled folder indicating the basis for sampling, the method and the extent of the original amount of material. Reference was made to Eleanor McKay's article in The American Archivist on "Random Sampling Techniques: A Method of Reducing Large, Homogeneous Series in Congressional Papers" (vol. 41, no. 3, July 1978, pp. 281-289).