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The papers of former U.S. Rep. Lee H. Hamilton related to his service as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission are now available for viewing online, made possibly by a partnership of the Modern Political Papers Collection of the Indiana University Libraries and the Indiana University Digital Library Program.

In order to make the collection’s materials easily retrievable, the Digital Library Program leveraged their cutting-edge infrastructure and innovative approaches to digitizing collections. The project also represents a significant milestone, demonstrating the flexibility and scalability of the program to meet specific needs of archivists and scholars.

The complexities of the 9/11 Commission Papers presented particular challenges, with half of the collection consisting of emails with attachments. Additionally, the collection included briefing books, staff reports, testimony binders, working drafts of recommendations, notes, background readings, statements, and 3932 images.

IU Libraries political papers specialist Kate Cruikshank worked closely with the Digital Library Program to ensure relationships among items across the collection were maintained. As a result of this collaborative effort, users can efficiently navigate the collection with a guide available through Archives Online at IU, a service hosted by the Digital Library Program. 

About the Hamilton 9/11 Commission Papers

Lee H. Hamilton’s 9/11 Commission papers were assembled by Hamilton personally, apparently to document the processes of the Commission’s work. The papers provided the raw materials for Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, the book co-authored by Hamilton and 9/11 Commission Chair Thomas Kean.

The record that Hamilton assembled in this collection documents the inner workings of the 9/11 Commission on a nearly daily basis. It includes efforts to gain access to White House documents, interactions with the 9/11 families, and ongoing attention to press coverage and speculation. In addition, it reveals the intensity of efforts to maintain the integrity of the nonpartisan, reasoned approach to which Kean and Hamilton had committed themselves, as well as the pressures they confronted in protecting that process. 

The Hamilton collection is complementary to the official records of the 9/11 Commission, which consist of approximately 570 feet of textual files and an unspecified amount of electronic and audio-visual material. The records are housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

About the Digital Library Program

The IU Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the Indiana University Libraries, University Information Technology Services, and the university research faculty with leadership from the School of Library and Information Science and School of Informatics and Computing. This collaboration capitalizes on the institutional capabilities of Indiana University, focusing university resources on digital library services and projects that support the teaching and research of IU faculty, support the learning and research of IU students, and foster research about the digital library.