The institutional records of the Indiana University Faculty Council cover the period beginning 1947 and ending in 1970. Major topics discussed in the records include departmental debates regarding the use of written English for students who use English as a second language, Vietnam War era protests, and the University Self-Study on the Improvement of Teaching. The collection is made up of four series: Minutes and Agendas, Annual Summaries, Circulars, and Supporting documents.

The Minutes and Agendas consist of the recorded proceedings of the Faculty Council Meetings. There are two sets of minutes contained in this collection. The first was apparently an office or reference copy in which the minutes run sequentially from 1947 until 1957. The second set of Minutes in the collection are separated individually into folders and run from 1947 until 1969. Material contained in both sets from the era between 1947 and 1957 is the same, however, the minutes in the second set were those documents meant for distribution to the Faculty Council. The Agendas were distributed at least one week prior to council meetings, setting the topics for discussion at meetings, and often included supplementary documents that were up for presentation or discussion. While the Faculty Council did not always address all issues on the agendas, this series provides a general sense of the priorities of the council. In the case of some files there is a small amount of supplemental meeting material included such as correspondence or related memorandums.

The Annual summaries compose the fifth series in the collection. The summaries recount the major decisions/actions of the Faculty Council over the course of the Academic Year. This collection contains a full run of the annual summaries, from the 1947-48 academic year until the 1968-69 academic year.

Circulars were a of supplementary documents that were distributed either before or at Faculty Council meetings, and touched on important agenda items or were new materials presented for debate. Circulars in series three are arranged numerically, according to the order in which they were presented to the Faculty Council for discussion at meetings as well as according to school year. The numeric order restarts with each academic year, and thus provides a general sense of chronology, though the series is not arranged by date. Topics highlighted within the circulars include memorial resolutions for deceased members of the faculty, departmental reviews and reports, discussions of student aid and ROTC, as well as the setting of the academic calendar. The official numbering of the Faculty Council circulars began with the 1958-1959 academic year, previous supplemental materials are included with Supporting Documents series.

The Supporting documents series consists of general supporting administrative documents such as general announcements, reports on topics such as smoking in the library, women’s education, faculty retirement and bylaw revisions special committee reports on faculty-student relations, the improvement of faculty teaching, library and athletics as well as faculty memorial resolutions.

All series and subseries in this collection, except Circulars, are arranged chronologically.