Presidential Libraries

Last month Barack and Michelle Obama officially opened the new Barack Obama Presidential Centre. This is a library, museum and education project in Chicago, commemorating the 44th President of the USA. Included within the centre is a branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the centre plans to work closely with the National Archives, to ensure that many of the documents are digitised. The new building is expected to get over 700,000 visitors each year.

Thirty-second President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered to leave his papers to the public in a building donated by him on his New York estate. Since that time, various laws have ensured the keeping of documents and the presidential library system. The libraries are established in each president’s home state. Each offers various public programmes. Together the libraries hold over 400 million pages of textual materials, about 10 million photographs, 5,000 km of film, and half a million museum objects. Several presidents have chosen to be buried at their own presidential library.

Not all presidential papers fall into the network of the Presidential Libraries System and there are some unofficial presidential libraries as well. Today the presidential paper repositories/museums/libraries include those for George Washington (Virginia), John Adams (Massachusetts), Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), James Madison (Virginia), James Monroe (Virginia), John Quincy Adams (Massachusetts), Andrew Jackson (Tennessee), Abraham Lincoln (Illinois), Andrew Johnson (Tennessee), Ulysses S. Grant (Mississippi), Rutherford B. Hayes (Ohio), Grover Cleveland (New Jersey), William McKinley (Ohio), Theodore Roosevelt (Dakota), Woodrow Wilson (Virginia), Warren D. Harding (Ohio), Calvin Coolidge (Massachusetts), Herbert Hoover (Iowa), Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York), Harry S. Truman (Missouri), Dwight D. Eisenhower (Kansas), Lyndon B. Johnson (Texas), Richard Nixon (California), Gerald Ford (Michigan), Jimmy Carter (Georgia), Ronald Reagan (California), George Bush (Texas), Bill Clinton (Arkansas), and George W. Bush (Texas). The Joe Biden Centre will be in Delaware, and the Donald J. Trump Presidential Centre is in the planning stage and will be in Florida (I can hardly bear to think how many images of Trump’s face will be emblazoned all over it).

I have been lucky enough to visit the John F. Kennedy Library (which holds an amazing collection of Ernest Hemingway papers and items), the Ulysses S. Grant centre, and also the gorgeously landscaped Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.