I am an archivist at a presidential library, and was interested to read Mr. Clark's critique of NARA's presidential libraries. The book has substantial strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
1. Clark is right to criticize NARA for being too deferential to former presidents and their foundations. There is a problem with de facto dual control over the records at PRA libraries. NARA is the legal custodian of the records, but the former president can exercise formal control over how records are opened during the 12-year period that the Presidential Records Act is in effect. But that can often turn into informal control over what records are processed (not just over how they are reviewed). NARA should be far more willing to exercise its prerogative as custodian of these materials and emphasize to the private foundations that our primary responsibility is to the public, and we will process records accordingly. And while the PRA enables a former president to close records, NARA should push back against unreasonable closures.
2. Clark talks about the problem of too little funding for NARA. We deal with a massive amount of material, not just at presidential libraries, but across the agency. There is more and more to process and make available, both paper and electronic. We often do not have the staff necessary to more or less keep up with it all, and we certainly do not have the technological capabilities to make our electronic records readily accessible. Clark puts a lot of the blame on Congress for under-funding NARA. While there is some truth to that, I think NARA shares the blame for not spending its money on the right things (which Clark also says). I won't go into a detailed discussion of this, but we have spent money on some ridiculous things compared to the real needs of the agency and public. Just to keep things in perspective however, we aren't much different from a lot of archives and libraries across the country: more and more material to handle, but not nearly enough resources. The challenge of trying to do more with less is something a lot of institutions can relate to.
3. NARA's leadership is criticized in the book for low morale within the agency, and lack of vision overall. Clark's criticism is sound, especially when it comes to making the entire system work better and devising a better plan for the handling of future NARA acquisitions. NARA has said that our way of doing things (building a new library for each president) is not sustainable over the long term. Okay, so then what is the alternative? Are NARA's leaders advocating for a new approach? Beyond the issue of building libraries is the problem of how we review and open the records. Are NARA's leaders asking Congress for a new law that facilitates greater/earlier release of records? Not that I can see. Yes, we need to rethink much of what we do, but I don't see us doing that at all.
4. Related to this, Clark raises good questions about the sustainability of the presidential libraries system in the decades to come, both older libraries that have declining use, and the prospect of future facilities that will place more burdens on NARA's budget. I've been to several (though not all) of the libraries, including some of the oldest. I've loved all of them. This is not criticism of their content or mission, but it is a valid question whether it makes sense as time goes on to continue supporting them despite diminishing numbers of both museum visitors and researchers. Does it really make sense for NARA to keep supporting these institutions on an individual basis? I think Clark suggests the possibility of eventually sending the records the older libraries hold back to Washington, and turning the operation of the museums and historic sites to the private foundations or some other entity. It's worth considering. I don't want the older libraries and museums to disappear, but does it make sense to continue things as we've been doing them? And does it make sense to continue building libraries that NARA will have to support? More and more facilities to staff and maintain, and an ever-greater amount of material to care for, will require an ever-greater amount of money. Clark is right to question whether there is a more cost-effective way to further NARA's mission.
Weaknesses:
1. By far the biggest problem I have with the book is how Clark characterizes the problems involved with reviewing and opening presidential records. He repeats, as if it is a rule, that many records will not be open for 100 years; even saying that on the back cover ("...the records that show what actually happened won't be opened for more than a hundred years..."). Where is this coming from? I work at a PRA library, and I know of no such rule that mandates the closure of records for that period of time. Under the Presidential Records Act, a former president can close certain types of records for up to 12 years after he leaves office. At that point, the PRA falls away, and only Freedom of Information Act closures apply. If there is some provision that we can, or must, close any record for a century, I have yet to hear of it, and I work with this material every day.
On this topic, there is an important detail that Clark doesn't get into. I don't think it even appears in passing in the book. Either Clark doesn't know this, or doesn't tell his readers this, but NARA does not have declassification authority. That means that if a document has been withdrawn as classified, and a researcher requests that it be declassified, NARA has to send that document to the department or agency that created it. That department or agency then gets to decide whether to declassify, and NARA has to abide by their decision. If the decision is "no", then that document remains classified. We cannot act on our own and declassify. And there is no set time period for how long something could remain classified. So if, for example, the Department of Defense insists that a 40-year old memo remains classified, there's not much that NARA can do about it. The impression Clark gives is that a lot of material will be unavailable simply because NARA wants it to be so, and that's not accurate.
2. On the subject of review of presidential records, I had hoped that Clark would address in depth the matter of the Presidential Records Act, which covers all presidential records from the Reagan administration going forward, because much of the reason why it takes so long to open material is because the way we review records is cumbersome--both for the archivist and the researcher. The Presidential Records Act needs to be replaced, or at least reworked so that NARA staff can spend more time processing and reviewing, and less time figuring out what constitutes "presidential advice". The PRA enables a former president to close material that is advisory (again, for 12 years), but if you adopt a solar system-wide definition of what is advisory, you will be spending a lot of time closing material, and as a result, not much will be opened to the public very quickly.
Towards the end, Clark says, "As for the records, new legislation would help. But for a start, mandating that presidents can't open new libraries, or make changes to existing libraries, before a large portion of the records are open should spur lots of creative ways to speed up the process." I don't really see what the construction, location, or funding of the buildings themselves have to do with how the records are made available. Addressing any of the former issues really won't do anything to influence the latter. Some discussion of what could replace the PRA would've been helpful, because the problem of making more records available to the public is, after all, one of the major topics of the book.
3. Clark criticizes the museum exhibits and public programming that NARA does. He criticizes these things not only because he believes they are politically slanted, but even because NARA does them at all. I disagree with his implication that NARA can either work on its records or do public outreach, but not both. Our primary role is custodian of federal government records. We preserve them and make them available to researchers. Most people out there are not researchers. Do we not have a role to explain our history, or foster discussion of it? Is it unreasonable to generate interest in American history and in primary sources among the very large section of the public that does not have occasion to do primary source research? Many non-governmental archives and special collections libraries host exhibits and public programs as a part of their mission, and the NARA facilities in Washington, DC do as well. We want the general public to know we exist, to know what we do, and what we have. Are we really only supposed to care about the very tiny slice of the American population that will ever use one of our research rooms?
4. In talking about the development of presidential libraries, Clark argues that the purpose of the libraries has changed drastically from their original objective: at first, they were only concerned with presidential records, and glorification of the former president with a museum was not part of it. That is very much open to debate. Of course presidential commemoration was always part of this! He says, "Franklin Roosevelt...would be ashamed of modern presidential libraries." Perhaps. But it's important to remember that Roosevelt intended his library to be part repository and part museum. His library was supposed to be a site of commemoration all along, not just a place to do research. Why else would he set aside land for a combined archives and museum facility, and even donate his Hyde Park house to the government? If caring for his papers was the only thing he was interested in, he could've just deeded his papers to the government and left it at that. He wanted the general public, and not just scholars, to come see what a great guy he was. The scale of presidential glorification with the libraries has certainly increased, and arguably it has gotten over the top. But to say that newer presidential libraries are a betrayal of what they were initially intended to be is problematic.
5. I'm assuming that Clark's goal was to write a serious, scholarly critique of the presidential libraries. In some places, he achieves that; in other places, he does not. The way the book was written sometimes detracted from his argument. All too often, he took a mocking and sarcastic tone that really isn't appropriate for this type of book. And he'd sometimes write in short, choppy sentences, as if this is a cheap mystery novel that tries to inject the narrative with phony drama. In one place, he cited Jon Stewart's criticism of the George W. Bush Library. Is Jon Stewart a historian? An authority on museums? An authority on archives? An authority on anything related to presidential libraries? No, no, no, and no. What is the point of including the opinion of someone who is pretty biased but who is not drawing upon any real knowledge or experience with anything the book talks about? Not necessary, and it undercuts the strength that Clark's points have.
Lastly, and this isn't necessarily a shortcoming of the book, Clark speculates on what former President Obama might do with his library. Since the book was published, we know more about Obama's plans. Clark suggested that a digital Obama Library, in which all records are available online, would be a major advancement; that, combined with an Obama museum that is operated independently of NARA, would be a considerable improvement and potentially a model for how the management of presidential records and presidential legacies can be handled.
Clark says, "Think of the impact to Obama's legacy--to posterity--if, instead of the largest, or the most expensive, or the most laudatory or the most 'architecturally significant,' his library becomes the fastest to process and release all of its records." I think we have to be very careful with our expectations here. Having everything accessible online is a nice idea, but getting there presents a number of challenges. There will be a massive amount of material to work with, both electronic and textual. A lot of material will be closed. President Obama will almost certainly close advisory material as he is able to do under the Presidential Records Act, in which case it will be nearly 2030 before the substantive records on his presidency start to become available. A good amount will be closed because it is classified.
Then there are the technological issues. You can devise a computer program to speed up the review of records, but that will only get you so far. Someone will still need to go page by page, email by email. You need a publicly accessible program that will enable a user to easily search the material that has been opened. The Obama Library now has the largest amount of electronic data of any presidential library; the Bush 43 Library now has the second largest, and NARA has yet to establish any such publicly accessible search capability for that library's electronic records.
The idea that just because this will supposedly be all-digital, the public will get earlier/greater access is overly sanguine. It isn't as if all that needs to be done is an archivist flipping a switch, and the entire documentary history of the Obama presidency will then be available. Technological limitations, a manpower shortage, and the closure of records as provided for by law all means that making the Obama records open to the public will take decades.
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