In fact, the American Presidential Library is not an ordinary library. Because his collection includes all kinds of documents, manuscripts, archives, books, souvenirs and so on. During the president's life and term of office, it is not only a library, but actually an archives and museum. In the meantime, there are various files during the presidency, which are part of the core files of the US federal government. In addition, of course, there are gifts, personal belongings, books, works of art, currency, stamps and so on. Accepted during the presidency. It can be said that anything related to the president can be put in and watched. Therefore, the so-called presidential library is essentially a place where historical materials such as presidential archives are centrally kept and collected, and related services are also provided. For example, the Roosevelt Presidential Library has 65,438+05,000 books, as well as a number of archives, historical manuscripts, stamps, artworks, souvenirs, letters and other related materials.

The establishment of Roosevelt Presidential Library proves that it is a good way to preserve presidential documents and American historical archives. In particular, the construction of private donations does not require the state to spend money and is worth promoting. In order to better strengthen the management of the presidential library, the US Congress passed the Presidential Library Act in 1955, which brought the presidential library built by private donations into the jurisdiction of the National Archives, and maintained the management and operation of subsequent businesses with public funds, thus forming the "Presidential Library System" under the jurisdiction of the National Archives. And this kind of "private construction and public management" has also become the construction and management mode of the presidential library.

However, there are some problems with this model. For example, libraries are generally built in the hometown of the president or in places related to the life and death of the president, and the locations are scattered, so it is difficult to have consistent management procedures; The purpose and requirements of private donation construction and public fund management are not completely consistent, and the educational function and preservation function often conflict; The dean has the ownership of documents, which restricts the business management of archives; The scale of building museums is getting bigger and bigger, and public expenditure is also rising.

In order to solve the above problems, the U.S. Congress passed the Presidential Archives Act in 1978, which stipulated the definition of presidential archives and documents and the scope of opening them to the public, established that presidential archives and documents were owned by the state (after President Reagan), and established a mechanism for the public to have the right to use these documents (except for a few documents involving personal privacy and national security, all documents and files can be provided for use in the presidential library). 1986 revised the presidential library act, which limited the growing trend of libraries.