Library Champion: Let's talk about presidential libraries
Library Champion,
It seems that we hear nothing about presidential libraries until there is an outgoing president. There is now speculation as to where (or even if) former president Donald J. Trump will have his presidential library. Will it be in Florida? When will it be built? What will be inside it? There is already a website for Trump's library: Trumplibrary.gov.
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
In Trump's inner circle, there is speculation about a possible presidential library and museum. No announcements have been made, but two people familiar with internal discussions said it is likely to be located in Florida and run by Dan Scavino, one of Trump’s longest-serving and most loyal aides who advises him on social media and most recently served as deputy White House chief of staff.
One of these people, who was a top fundraiser on Trump’s campaign, said the president has told supporters he wants to raise $2 billion for the library — a far greater sum than has been raised for past presidential libraries — and thinks he can collect it in small-dollar donations from his grass-roots supporters.
The reported goal of $2 billion for the library is far in excess of the price tag for other presidential libraries. Former President George W. Bush raised just over $500 million for his "Presidential Center" in Dallas, which is expected to be the same amount it will to cost to build former President Barack Obama's own library in Chicago.
[Pictured: Franklin D. Roosevelt created the first presidential library in a modest Dutch Colonial style building near his home in Hyde Park, N.Y. “The dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith,” he said at the opening in 1941.]
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
The current presidential library system had its origins in 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt donated his papers to the federal government and began building a library to hold them near his home in Hyde Park, N.Y. (Before the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a president’s papers were considered his private property.)
The library, paid for with private funds, was donated to the National Archives. Since then, the federal system has grown to include all 13 presidents going back to Hoover, whose library was created retroactively.
Presidential libraries that focus on piecing together a more accurate view of a presidency are fascinating. White House records and other collections at the libraries have, for example, overturned the idea of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a genial, golf-playing figurehead, and revealed the depth of internal debate in Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House over the escalation of the Vietnam War.
But “America’s pyramids,” as the historian Robert Caro has called them, have also been subject to withering criticism. Over time what were intended as impartial repositories have ballooned into grandiose shrines where former presidents and their foundations wield influence not only at the museums (whose exhibits they pay for) but even, some have charged, in the research reading rooms themselves.
Presidential libraries are following a similar trend American prisons have been seeing: moving away from public management to privatization. The National Archives faces stagnant budgets and an exploding number of records to care for, leaving room for nonprofit boards or close associates taking control of the planning and running of the presidential libraries.
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
[Pictured: At the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Tex., shelves containing some of the 45 million pages of documents are visible behind a glass.]
At this point, it boils down to what your definition of a library is.
- Does a library include the print version of millions of pages of presidential documents or are they all digitized? Or both?
- Who would be staffing the library: trained academic librarians or close friends of the president and their family?
- Is the library enormous in size and serves as a shrine to a set image of the president, or does it leave room for the image to evolve as research trickles in?
Presidential libraries were seen as a place for research and serious inquiry. They now look to be trending towards becoming theme parks.
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
Staff Review by Christine May:
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (Adult fiction)
I belong to that infinitesimal group of readers who have not read the Harry Potter series. Of course I am aware that the books are immensely popular and that J.K.Rowling is a hugely successful author. So when I stumbled upon The Casual Vacancy in the adult section I just had to give it a try. I sure hope that you will as well.
I find Ms. Rowling to be an extraordinary storyteller and in this particular story I absolutely feasted on the minutiae of her character’s lives.
This is a story about a town named Pagford, divided just like every other town. The haves and the have nots, the folks who live on the right side of the tracks and the wrong. About a council in need of filling a seat unexpectedly left vacant. And about the underhanded plotting to fill said seat with someone who will swing in the desired direction in the matter concerning the Fields.
So, from the houses on the hill bearing a civilized and polite façade to the graffitied and littered neighborhood of public housing, you’ll run the gamut of lifestyles. And oh, you can leave your prejudices and assumptions at home, thank you very much. Remember, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.
At the heart of the controversy is the contentious existence of a place called the Fields, the sole haven for those in recovery. Teenager Krystal Weedon knows that if the Fields closes, her heroin addicted mother will have a third child taken away from her. Little four year old Robbie relies on big sister Krystal for sustenance and safe keeping. His mother Terri is one of those unfortunates who can’t seem to get out of her own way. Krystal tries to balance her schoolwork, her practice time with the rowing team, parenting Robbie and a smoldering relationship with Fats – best friend to Andrew Price.
Now Barry Fairbrother, the man who dies suddenly and thus leaves a council seat vacant was born and raised on the wrong side of the tracks. He has spent his life as a high school teacher and guidance counselor always remaining optimistic about his future, the future of his town, and the future of his students. He was the selfmade man in the middle who could appreciate all perspectives. Filling his place in the community would not be an easy task.
The reader will follow the lives of Kay, a social worker and single mom to teenaged daughter Gaia. The pair have left London so that Kay can pursue a love interest living here in Pagford. You can just imagine how reluctant Gaia is to leave the big city and her friends.
Parminder and Vikram Jawanda are council member and surgeon, wife and husband and parents to Sukhvinder and her two siblings. They are a family of high achievers who as a consequence have a high degree of stress as well. Sukhvinder is the daughter who can’t seem to measure up, she hides all from her distracted mother.
The Price family (if that’s what you call a group of people who abuse one another) of the high hill dwellers have more than their fair share of secrets and shame as well.
Bottom line: The cast of characters goes on and on. I insist that following the web strands connecting the lives of the Pagfordians is enthralling in a most greedily voyeuristic way. Their capabilities as well as their downfalls will keep you tuned in to the town gossip and newspaper headlines.
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
One of the books I purchased that you should check out: The Unwilling by John Hart (Adult fiction)
A family melodrama at first appears to be the center of Hart’s latest, a diffuse tale that lacks the drive of his other works. Jason French has just returned to Charleston, South Carolina. After a dishonorable discharge from the Marines, Jason spiraled into drug abuse and landed in prison. Now freed, his presence roils a wounded family. His twin brother, Robert, was killed in Vietnam. Family patriarch William and his wife, Gabrielle (a woefully undeveloped character), determine to keep Jason away from his impressionable younger brother, Gibby, a high school senior. Gibby looks up to Jason, eventually believing his dishonorable discharge was undeserved.
Gibby’s coming-of-age tale might have focused the story, but it vies with a long lineup of characters, events, and themes trailing through the plot. Family drama morphs into horror story when a convict among a busload of inmates from a state prison farm spots Jason and informs Prisoner X (so named because his real name is Axel, or possibly because he killed 10 men). Worth millions and brutally powerful, X terrorizes prison staff and powerful outsiders into doing his bidding. X shared prison time with Jason and now, for reasons gradually parsed out, wants the ex-Marine back at the prison, so he manipulates his minions to murder a woman Jason knows and frame him for the killing. Fleeing arrest, Jason is captured and sent back to prison. Gibby thereupon determines to clear his brother of murder and learn what was behind Jason’s discharge from the Marines (alas, not a very startling reveal). Now the narrative turns into a more traditional police procedural.
Bottom line: The case windup adds some much-needed juice to an otherwise slow-moving, colorless narrative, which ends with a chilling kicker.
Donate to the library today! It takes less than a minute. Click here.
Did you know? Lists of our new releases are available in-person at the library and online so that you never miss a new release.
Is your library card current? If not, click here to see. It's one of the most powerful things you can have.
Your support ensures that a library card is incredibly valuable and remains free.
A Song of Ice
It's the dead of winter and with that comes the snow, ice, and wintry mix. If the schools are delayed or closed, we most likely are as well. Check our website or call us before braving the roads.
You can make a donation to the library in under 2 minutes. Click here to do just that.
--
Your library misses you. We wish you and your family health and wellbeing during these (and all) times.
--Vince Giordano
Librarian and Director of the Juniata County Library.
P.S.- You don't need to make an account or jump through any hoops to be a library champion. I wouldn't say this if it wasn't true. You can make this happen in less than a minute. Just click here.