Congress Needs to Fund Archival Functions Appropriately. Period.

Abstract

I agree with R. Bruce Craig that the archival processing needs of NARA’s presidential libraries should be communicated more effectively to Congress. The National Coalition for History, which he leads, can probably help with that. Even more important, Congress needs to fund those functions appropriately so that presidential documents are opened to the public within a reasonable time, probably twelve to fifteen years after the end of a presidency. I do not agree with Craig’s proposed fiscal solution of earmarking a significant portion of endowment and trust funds to address processing backlogs. Processing archival records in all formats is the one aspect of presidential libraries that is clearly a federal government responsibility, and it has been since the beginning of the system. The endowment and trust funds are privately funded accounts. The endowments, in particular, are established to support the libraries over the long haul. My interviews with presidential library directors reveal that those funds are already overburdened, especially in the older libraries. Endowment and trust funds should not be depleted in their early years to pay for archival functions that Congress and the current White House should support without question.