What presidential libraries have you been to?

[angus]

Herbert Hoover.  That's the only one I've been to.  I was the invited keynote speaker at an event a few years ago at West Branch  Iowa and the trip took less time than I had anticipated, so I had some time to kill.  There's really not a whole hell of a lot of diversions in West Branch, Iowa, so I found the Herbert Hoover library pretty quickly, and gave it the standard perusal.  The blue-haired woman working the desk gave me a discount, so my entrance was only five dollars rather than the usual ten dollars, but being as how that's five dollars more than I usually pay to enter libraries, or any other places, I was a bit put off by the admission fee.  It is set up like a museum, with a suggested walking tour, one which can be done in about ten minutes, but I stretched it out to twenty.  Mostly it had photos of Herbert, either as a young man or as a middle-aged guy coping with feeding a country during the great depression, and there were a few mock-up sets.  There was one room devoted to his doting wife, Lou.  We Americans do love our First Ladies, don't we.  Lots of Hoover quotes on the wall.  Overall, I'd have to say that it was a life-changing event.  Before visiting that library I had always associated the word hoover with a vacuum cleaner.  After the visit, I'm more likely to think of the president.  The vacuum cleaner hasn't been completely displaced, but now I usually ask, "do you mean the vacuum cleaner or the president?"