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Show I Page B6 THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, Sunday, February 16, 1992 Jimmy Carter left revealing paper trail for presidential library EDITOR'S NOTE -H- istorians trying to evaluate the presidency of Jimmy Carter have found a revealing paper trail. Carter while in the White House liked to see things in writing and he, in turn, made proline notes. Archivists at the Carter Presidential Library are still less than a third of the way through processing some 26 million documents hauled from the Carter White House. ATLANTA (AP) Jimmy Carter's tight, measured script is seen in the margins of virtually every memo, report and briefing book that crossed his desk at the White House. Newly opened files at the Carter Presidential Library disclose that Carter, unlike some other modern presidents, liked to put his thoughts on paper usually on the paper that prompted the thought. He was a speed reader who preferred memos to meetings so he could deal more efficiently with issves presented to him. He'd quickly write his decisions or questions in the margins and send the paper on its way. "He could write endlessly in a pierfect hand," says Robert Ivie, a speech communications professor from Texas A&M University. In researching the writing of Carter's first major foreign policy address, Iyie found draft after draft on which Carter had written extensive notes. "It was shocking," he says "I have been to other libraries and only rarely did I find something in the president's handwriting. But '' Jimmy Carter was all over. ; The Carter library, open for six years, has processed 7.5 million of the 26 million documents hauled out of Carter's White House when he left in 1981 after four years in office. ' Processed, in this case, means a historian with the National Archives and Records Administration has read the document, taken steps to preserve it, made a photocopy if it's really valuable, figured out where it should be listed in the collection's index and put it in a e folder and box. special, Last summer, after three solid years of work, archivists Jim Herring, Keith Shuler and Gary Foulk finished processing Carter's staff secretary's file, including 150,000 pages of what historians call the handwriting file. In most presidential libraries, the handwriting file documents written or signed by the president is a small part of a staff secretary's file, which includes most of the written material seen by the president. Carter, however, annotated virtually everything he read. Within a fpw days after the start of his administration, staff secretary Susan Clough gave up trying to separate the papers on which Carter made a note, says library director Don Schewe. She photocopied everything in Carter's outbox every day and put the originals in the handwriting file. The few unannotated pages were stamped "the president - ' - - v" v , "ij 1 U Vs x-- X J? S watt N ""VV. C W t.Wf . i . 3 1 ; "r to it yoa pf y. Mo . liforwitloo: o t if 1M tht fan tw i,,.. at- . rJ rr Carter while he was president was that he immersed himself too much in the minutiae of the office. Scholars are finding evidence to support that in the range and detail of materials from Carter's outbox. They have found a treasure-trov- e that answers the questions of what the president knew, when he knew it and. in many cases, how he reacted to it. The copious detail in the files gives scholars reason to wonder just how much paperwork will be left for their review in the years ahead. J-- Missouri " 5 Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., dedicated 1946, museum in June 1941 Harry S. Truman Library independence. Mo., opened July 1957 in O Herbert Hoover Library West Branch, Iowa, opened Aug. 1962 O Dwlght D. Eisenhower Library Abilene, Kansas, opened May 1962 in in museum Nov. 1954 John S Jjr "'I f t Jr f jttM " "w Wn to O Lyndon k thir. campus April 1980. opened May The museum 1 at me University of Texas 971 University of Michigan in Ann Arbor opened Grand Rapids opened Sept. 1981 in Jimmy Carter Library Jim Herring, archivist at the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, holds up one of Jimmy Carter's memos. Carter preferred memos to meetings because he was a fast reader and he could deal with the issues immediately, usually by writing notes in the margins. based on oral briefings," says John Kessel, an Ohio State University political scientist writing a book on the presidency. Leo Ribuffo, a historian at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., says he got a Baines Johnson Library in Austin opened Oct. 1979 in Boston, Gerald R. Ford Library at the AP Laserpholo With the proliferation of personal computers and stick-o- n notes, they fear future presidential files won't contain the annotations that revealed so much about decisionmaking in the Carter White House. Separate files containing presi- - F. Kennedy Library in Atlanta Ronald Reagan Library opened opened Oct. 1986 in Nov. 4, 1991 at Simi Valley, Calif. lot of material for the book he's writing on the Carter presidency by looking through the hourly chronology of Carter's days as revealed in the handwriting file. The margin notes weren't as helpful as he had hoped. Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, is the only library and museum not operated by the National Archives. It is supported by private donations. Nixon is scheduled to open a private library Q Richard Yorba Linda, Calif, and be privately funded. in will it S-'-..-. xpansion Capital Availab TO PROVO CITY BASED SMALL BUSINESSES The Business Development Corporation of Provo administers a special Federal Loan Capital Fund that is available to you from $10,000 to $100,000. For more information call the Provo City Department of Economic Development 379-616- AP Laserphoto Visitors look at President Jimmy Carter's Oval Office on display at the Carter Library in 0. Atlanta. dential handwriting have been kept since President Lyndon Johnson was in office. But Johnson preferred to make decisions verbally, rather than in writing. And his staff did not keep a specific chronological file containing all the material Johnson read each day. Richard Nixon's management style was closer to Carter's in that Nixon also preferred to make decisions by choosing from options presented in writing, but the background for those decisions is spread throughout his files. ( fit! vU 4- - ' .A Dale Asay 224-890- 3 mm Lon Sorensen Dave Jensen Nigel Cook 225-200- 0 Life Specialist Orem Logs of the tapes made by Nixon's secret taping system give scholars a chronological list of Nixon's conversations, but the tapes cover only about half of his presidency. Ronald Reagan's handwriting file contains fewer pages than Carter's, even though Reagan served two terms to Carter's one. And there is no corollary file containing all the material Reagan saw on a given day. 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