Clay Jenkinson is a humanities scholar at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. A decade ago, he was hiking in the Badlands and he thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a national Roosevelt presidential library?”
But the papers of the 26th president are scattered between The National Archives, Harvard and Sagamore Hill, New York. So Jenkinson started a project to create a virtual presidential library for TR.
Digitizing is only half the battle. His team needs to tag every document with searchable meta-data, which could take up to 25 years. The total cost is estimated to be $40 million – including a small museum at Dickinson State University.
There hasn’t been much effort to scan the papers of pre-digital presidents. And the more recent presidents haven’t been forthcoming with their documents.
Anthony Clark wrote a book about presidential libraries called “The Last Campaign,” and he says some libraries take over a decade to fill out FOIA – or Freedom of Information Act – requests.
All the documents in the Roosevelt virtual library will be available all the time -- and there’s no one left from his family or administration trying to protect his legacy who might try to hold the release of documents considered to be less than flattering.
With the creation of the cloud-based library, theoretically, that could mean fewer visitors to places like Roosevelt's home in Sagamore Hill. But chief curator Amy Verone isn’t worried about her job.
“For us this is a great advantage to publicize our holdings and give us a peek into what other people have,” she said.
