Originally, way back in the dim distant past, presidential libraries were designed to...(gasp!)...be a place to study the ex-president's papers! Now, it can be argued that we have the National Archives for that, and personally I think that's the correct place.

But then there are all of those things -- gifts, photos, bribe receipts and so on. Those little things from before and after the term in office. Reagan's boyhood football. Clinton's cigars. Stuff like that.

So the notion that the Presidential Library would take it came about. I don't think that they should be called libraries, but museums. All the Presidential papers -- and anything else associated with the person's term of office and public life -- goes to the National Archives. All the rest can be put in a library, a museum, burnt, sent to a landfill, sold at a garage sale, whatever.