The Archbishop Ioann of San Francisco Papers were donated to the Amherst Center for Russian Culture by Archbishop Ioann’s estate in 1994. Galina Mikhniuk, one of the executors and Archbishop Ioann’s longtime personal assistant and family friend, was instrumental in the donating and packing of the Papers after Archbishop Ioann’s death. In 1997, after Galina Mikhniuk’s death, Constantine Checkene, the last executor of the estate, sent the rest of material to the Center.
A portion of the Papers, Correspondence, Series I and III, was sorted by Alexander Gribanov, Aaron Staymen, Konstantin Rusanov, Elizabeth Blair, and Corie Wallace between 1999 and 2003. The rest of the material was sorted, organized and catalogued by Tanya Chebotarev during the summers of 2004 and 2005. Bella Barmak listed and reported collection to the Internet in the spring of 2006.
Books from the Archbishop Ioann’s personal library were removed from his papers and will be catalogued as a part of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture general book collection. Also removed were audio- and videotapes and personal papers of Galina Mikhniuk, which will be processed as separate collections.