Obama Center Breaks Presidential Library Tradition With Private Control

The Obama Presidential Center, which opened to the public June 19 in Chicago, operates under a structure that diverges from presidential libraries dating back decades. Rather than deed the campus to the federal government and National Archives, the Obama Foundation retained private nonprofit control while housing official records in a separate digital agreement with NARA. Historians and transparency advocates scrutinized the decision during planning, though the foundation said public archive access would be preserved.