The National Archives and Records Administration—which operates presidential library-museums for every president from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush—won’t be operating either for Obama. His private Obama Foundation, not the government, will own and operate the museum. And there really won’t be a presidential library. The Obama Foundation will pay for NARA to digitize unclassified records and release them to the public as they become available, but the center’s “Library,” which may or may not house a local branch of the Chicago Public Library, will not contain or control presidential papers and artifacts, digital or otherwise. Instead, according to a NARA press release that called the museum “a new model for the preservation and accessibility of presidential records,” those records will be stored in “existing NARA facilities”—meaning one or more of the agency’s research or records centers across the country.

are. The laws governing the libraries are mostly silent when it comes to disclosing donations. Presidential foundations—and even presidents, while in office—may raise as much money, from whatever sources (including foreign governments), as they wish. And, with the exception of donations over $200 from registered lobbyists, no donation must be disclosed. In other words, someone wishing to gain influence with President Donald Trump could give him a $50 million check today, and as long as they wrote "For the Trump Library "on the memo line, we’d never know about it.

Unlike many of his predecessors, Obama eschewed directly soliciting library donations while in office, and voluntarily disclosed donations he received (and, perhaps consequently, is reportedly well behind previous presidents in amassing a fortune to build his center). But the operative word is “voluntarily”—neither he, nor his successors, are under any legal obligations when it comes to disclosing such donations.