The Morrison Papers document the political career of one of Wisconsin's notable women legislators, but unfortunately the collection is far from complete. Although relatively large in comparison with other state legislative collections when originally received at SHSW (25 cubic feet), the collection contains relatively little documentation about Morrison's first two years in the Senate and virtually no information on her election campaigns. There are also no true personal papers, no academic papers, and no materials on her involvement in professional and women's organizations.
The papers should be used in conjunction with the 1978 paper by UW student Roseline Rowe in Box 19 which analyzed Morrison and Michele Radosevich, who was elected to the state Senate two years after Morrison. Rowe discusses Morrison's leadership on some traditional women's issues such as divorce, her lack of leadership on others, as well as her academic interest in non-traditional legislative subjects such as agricultural economics and mining taxes. Morrison's election to the powerful Joint Finance Committee in only her second year is also important, and it is well covered here. Because official JFC records are held by the Historical Society Archives as part of Series 169, the documentation in the Morrison papers has been weeded to focus on her role. As a result, the documentation about the 1977-1978 budget and budget repair bill largely focuses on issues brought to the Health and Social Services group of which she was a member. Beyond Morrison's own unique status, her collection is also important for the documentation it provides about her district such as railroad abandonment and highway improvements.
The papers are organized as BILLS, CORRESPONDENCE AND SUBJECT FILES, COMMITTEES, and PERSONAL AND GENERAL FILES. The BILL FILES are arranged by bill number. With a few exceptions, the bill files cover only the 1977-1978 legislature, and they consist only of Senate bills that were sponsored or co-sponsored by Morrison or in which she took a special interest. Included are constituent correspondence, annotated draft bills, and informational materials circulated by legislators, state governmental agencies, and advocacy groups. The CORRESPONDENCE AND SUBJECT FILES contain documentation that is very similar, but they tend to concern Assembly bills or non-legislative issues. Especially important are the files on divorce reform, the family farm, railroad abandonment, and improvement of Highway 18-151. The documentation in the alphabetically-arranged COMMITTEE FILES is also similar, but this material concerns legislation about the Joint Finance Committee's deliberations about the 1977-1978 state budget and various special committees. These files focus on taxation in general and on appropriations for the Department of Health and Social Services in particular. Best documentated of the other committees on which Morrison served is the Legislative Council's Committee on Medical Malpractice.
Highlights of the PERSONAL AND GENERAL FILES are the complete files of press releases and her weekly newspaper column. Together, they provide the best documentation in the collection about Morrison and her political views.
