The Presidential Library System provides access to information from the administrations of the last thirteen presidents since Herbert Hoover. During President Franklin D. Roosevelt's tenure, he established the process of preserving his papers throughout his administration. He believed that these papers are an important part of American heritage and that the public should have access to these papers. Truman believed the same and in 1955 Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act (44 USC 2108). This act established a system of privately erected (endowments) and federally maintained libraries for Presidents. Prior to 1981, the papers and records of a President's tenure belonged solely to the President. This made it difficult to ensure everything from the administration would eventually make its way into the public domain. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public domain and established a new process under which presidential administrations must manage their records.
These libraries are not your typical library but rather a repository for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections, and other historical materials since the Hoover Administration. The oversight of the thirteen libraries is through the Office of Presidential Libraries, part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).There are museums and libraries for the Presidents preceding Hoover however, the funding and the administration for maintaining these collections is not through NARA. Many of the Presidential records preceding the Hoover administration and the Presidential Libraries Act have been split and housed in various libraries and museums across the county. In addition, these collections are incomplete due to bad storage practices and deliberate destruction.
For more information on the thirteen Presidential Libraries:
- Dwight D. Eisenhower Library
- John F. Kennedy Library
- Lyndon B. Johnson Library
- Richard Nixon Library
- Gerald Ford Library
- Jimmy Carter Library
- Ronald Regan Library
- George H.W. Bush Library
- William J. Clinton Library
- George W. Bush Library
- Presidential Libraries Act (44 USC 2108)
- Presidential Records Act of 1978 (44 USC 2201-2207)
Written by Brooke Jennings, Law Librarian Fellow
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