CNN gets inside look at $850 million Obama Presidential Library
No, it’s not a presidential library.
The Obama Presidential Center is not a traditional research library, a departure from the practice of modern-day presidents before him — at least dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose library opened in 1941.
No records from the Obama administration will be stored on site in Chicago. No government archivists will be on hand from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to help scholars research the Obama presidency.
It will be run privately by the nonprofit Obama Foundation instead of NARA. The presidential archive itself, run by NARA, will be made fully digital for the first time, which meant digitizing some 30 million pages, per the Obama Foundation.
Obama has argued will allow greater access in the years to come, considering many of the records are electronic anyway. The actual papers and other artifacts are stored in a National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland.
Presidential historians have criticized Obama’s decision to break with tradition and not open a traditional research library.
Naftali, who was brought aboard the Nixon library to create a more accurate account of the Watergate scandal, said he feared by not having the National Archives involved, “the Obama museum will lack the organic impulse to evolve in a nonpartisan, more nuanced direction.”
CNN’s Maureen Chowdhury contributed to this post.
