The Historian of the United States Senate heads the United States Senate Historical Office, which was created in 1975 to record and preserve historical information about the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and po ...

. The current

Historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

of the Senate is

Betty K. Koed Betty K. Koed is the current Historian of the United States Senate. She is the third person to hold that position and the first woman to do so. Koed graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1983 and received a bachelor's ...

Purpose

Serving as the Senate's institutional memory, the Historical Office collects and provides information on important events, precedents, dates, statistics, and historical comparisons of current and past Senate activities for use by members and staff, the media, scholars, and the general public. The office advises senators and committees on cost-effective disposition of their non-current office files, assists researchers seeking access to Senate records, and maintains automated information databases detailing locations of former members' papers. It conducts oral history interviews with retired senior Senate staff and keeps extensive biographical and bibliographical information on former senators. Many of these interviews are available on the Senate website. A collection of more than thirty thousand Senate-related photographs and other illustrations is available for research and publication use. The Historical Office and its staff has also produced numerous publications through the years, covering all aspects of Senate history.

List of Senate Historians

* Richard A. Baker 1975–2009 *

Donald A. Ritchie Donald A. Ritchie (born December 23, 1945) is Historian Emeritus of the United States Senate. Education He graduated from the City College of New York in 1967; and received a master's degree, in 1969, and a Ph.D., in 1975, from the University o ...

2009–2015 *

2015–present

External links

*https://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/a_three_sections_with_teasers/biblio.htm *https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/Senate_Historical_Office.htm 1975 establishments in Washington, D.C. Employees of the United States Senate Historians of the United States Congress Historians of the United States Historians of the United States Senate {{US-Congress-stub