LISNews: Librarian News

Bill writes "It has taken two weeks, 402 fine-tip markers and a college student with a bad case of writer’s cramp to sign the names of more than 5,000 donors onto the white beam.

Armed with a new Sharpie and surrounded by workers building the multimillion-dollar presidential library that the beam is a part of, Bill Clinton made the marker count 403.

More than 3,000 people cheered Friday as the former president signed his name to the beam that completes the skeleton of his presidential library in Little Rock.

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Barbara Maxwell was the millionth visitor to the library complex since it opened in 1997. The former president presented the Maxwells with a signed bust of himself and posed for pictures with the beaming couple.

Ironically, the Maxwells — who divide their time between homes in Pennsylvania and Florida — own four pairs of boots now on display in the library’s “Legends of the West” exhibit. They decided to stop by the library on the tail end of a cross-country business trip.
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An unknown benefactor submitted this:

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Neal writes about the debacle over the leadership at the Abraham Lincoln library. Rehashing the surprisingly sordid history produces quotes like, "In a vengeful act, after removing his name as a contender for library director, Newtson used his influence as Ryan's chief of staff to sabotage the library and museum. Newtson diverted half of the library's operating funds--$1.5 million--to the former Public Policy Institute at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Most of its programs have nothing to do with Lincoln."

"As loudspeakers played the tape-recorded voices of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, scholars, journalists and curious citizens pondered what presidential tape recordings have already added to history and what still-secret tapes may show, and whether the 18 1/2-minute gap would ever be filled. The hum from the gap was also played."

"At a two-day conference on the tapings, which concluded this afternoon at the Kennedy Library here, John Carlin, archivist of the United States, said it would be several months before experiments on blank tape from the Nixon era would show whether it was worth exposing the erased part of the tape to the risks of restoration by current technology. The erasure on the June 20, 1972, tape, remains one of the great mysteries of the Watergate era. H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, took notes that indicated he and the president had discussed Watergate in the June 20 meeting, just three days after the burglary." (from The New York Times)