20 March 14 • 2019
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Carl Levin Papers
Now Searchable
U-M’
s Bentley Library holds a treasure trove
of Michigan documents.
T
alk about leaving a paper trail!
To say the least, Carl Levin
has left a rather large one. His
personal archive that he donated to
the Bentley Historical Library at the
University of Michigan consists of
1,122 boxes of documents and more
than one terabyte of digital files.
That is a huge legacy of import-
ant historical documents, literally,
hundreds of thousands of individual
records. And, the Carl M. Levin
Papers are now open for research at
the Bentley Library.
Carl Levin was the first Jewish U.S.
senator from Michigan, serving for
36 years from 1979-2015. He is the
younger brother of recently retired
Congressman Sander Levin, who
also served for 36 years in Congress,
and who is the father of Andy Levin,
current U.S. congressman from
Michigan’
s 9th District (In 2018,
Sander Levin also donated his papers
to the Bentley Library).
Terry McDonald, director of the
Bentley, and Arthur F. Thurnau,
professor of history, summarized the
Levin’
s historical legacy: “The arc
of Sen. Levin’
s political career and
the political levels at which he has
served literally form a kind of map
of Michigan history in the late-20th
century.
“His first elective office was as a
member of the Detroit City Council,
where he served from his election
in 1968 until 1977 and from which
he was elected to the U.S. Senate
in 1978. That he has been the lon-
gest-serving U.S. senator in Michigan
history is the least of it. His career
has touched every major event in
a crucially important period of
American history and, therefore, his
papers will be consulted for decades
to come.”
Processing the Levin Collection,
that is, organizing the records and
preparing a 1,600-page finding aid
or detailed inventory to the collec-
tion, was a massive undertaking for
Bentley Library archivists.
According to Olga Virakhovskaya,
the supervising archivist for the proj-
ect, “The Levin collection is perhaps
the largest archive of personal papers
the Bentley Library has ever pro-
cessed. A total of 16 archivists and
students had a role in organizing and
describing these records over a peri-
od of six years to prepare them for
researchers. I am greatly honored to
have worked on this collection.”
And, the library is still working
on some of the digital files. In this
respect, preparing the Levin archive
was not only a challenge because of
the vast size of the collection, but
it also required new methods for
making digital records accessible to
researchers.
The Bentley Library is open to
the public and holds the largest col-
lection of historical records about
Michigan. It welcomes all research-
ers, from students and professors to
journalists, local historians and com-
munity members. In short, anyone
interested in the history of Michigan
and its people.
And, now, researchers can explore
the history of one of Michigan’
s great
senators and Jewish community lead-
ers: Carl M. Levin. ■
To see the finding aid to the Levin Collection,
which lists the various subjects within the
Levin Collection, go to bit.ly/2UyVr0I.
jews d
in
the
MIKE SMITH DJN FOUNDATION ARCHIVIST
The Carl Levin collection at the Bentley Library
PHOTO BY LIZ GADELHA
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