Notebooks

1 Dirksen, Everett McKinley (1896-1969), Papers

Notebooks, 1932-69
4 Linear Shelf Feet
236 folders

The Notebooks, numbering over 12,500 pages, contain outlines and texts of remarks, reference materials, and other documents collected by Dirksen and kept in a set of personal notebooks. According to his staff and family, Dirksen referred to these records frequently in composing speeches, preparing radio and television programs for constituents, and developing his thinking on issues.

For the most part, the Notebooks consist of speech outlines of varying detail. Many are preliminary drafts of remarks that may be found in more complete form in the Remarks and Releases file. There are numberous remarks, however, that have been preserved only in the Notebook series, particularly those prepared before 1952.

Topic coverage varies widely from campaigns and politics to legislation and foreign policy. Notebook Sixteen, for example, contains Dirksen’s trip diary documenting impressions gained during his 1945 world trip.

The Notebooks are arranged in two major divisions. The Notebook Documents section (f. 1-25) contains material that was filed with the Notebooks but not actually stored in ring binders. Much of this information was completely unsorted, and the processing staff arranged it in chronological order.

The numbered Notebook series (f . 26-236) comprises the bulk of the record group. Apparently, Dirksen did not keep the notebooks in a particular order, nor were the individual contents organized in a systematic fashion. Processors arranged the notebooks in chronological order by the earliest date in a notebook and assigned each an arbitrary number to distinquish it from the others. In order to preserve the notebooks as Dirksen collected and used them, the contents were not rearranged despite the lack of organization. A detailed finding aid listing each item in every notebook attempts to compensate for this weakness in organization.

The Notebooks provide a unique opportunity to explore Dirksen’s thoughts and actions. Of all the collection’s record groups, this series is most directly Dirksen’s own creation. The early documents also compensate partially for the loss of Dirksen’s House of Representatives records in 1949.

Dirksen Collection