Presidential libraries: from Boston to Honolulu ... or maybe Chicago

Presidential libraries can be found coast to coast, and may even go beyond that once a site is selected for President Obama's future repository of documents and artifacts. To quickly hopscotch around to the 13 official presidential libraries and museums overseen by the National Archives, plus that of Abraham Lincoln, check out this library list.

6. LBJ Presidental Library

AP/File
In a November 23, 1963 file photo, President Lyndon B. Johnson confers with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Website: www.lbjlibrary.org/

Location: Austin, Texas (LBJ's birthplace: Johnson City, 1908)

Opened: 1971

Attendance:  estimated 150,000

Admission: $8 adults; $5 seniors (admission for the library’s first 41 years was free, but since the opening on new exhibits on Dec. 22, visitors are encouraged to pay a “suggested” fee.

Bestselling gift shop biography: “Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency" by Mark K. Updegrove, LBJ Library director

Hot-selling souvenir item: a marble paperweight with the words “Can Do” etched on it. To be called a “Can Do” person was the highest compliment President and Mrs. Johnson paid people they admired.

Lesser-known facts: The LBJ Library was the first presidential library located on a university campus – the University of Texas in Austin. The library houses 45 million documents.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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