Caroline and Snowman

http://www.jfklibrary.org

Caroline Kennedy Speaks at Kennedy Library Forum

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations

Monday, September 19, 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

On the publication of Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy will join a panel of historians to discuss the 1964 interviews Arthur Schlesinger Jr. conducted with Mrs. Kennedy which have never before been available to the public.

Click here to make a reservation or call 617-514-1643.

For more information, visit www.jfklibrary.org.

Watch Kennedy Library Forums LIVE on-line at www.jfklibrary.org/webcast.

Join Caroline Kennedy to Celebrate President Kennedy's Birthday

Celebrate President Kennedy's Birthday Sunday, May 29, 2011 at 12:00 noon

You are invited to join Caroline Kennedy and The Honorable Ray Mabus, United States Secretary of the Navy, for a very special celebration of President John F. Kennedy's birthday this Sunday, May 29.

During this historic celebration, Secretary Mabus will officiate at the Naming Ceremony for CVN 79 - a United States Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier - to be built in the coming years and christened in 2018.

This inspiring and colorful celebration will include remarks by Caroline Kennedy and other dignitaries; a video presentation of President Kennedy's August 1, 1963 Address to the U.S. Naval Academy; the Presentation of Colors; music by the Navy Band; and the formal announcement by the United States Secretary of the Navy of the name to be given to the nuclear powered aircraft carrier CVN 79.

The Ceremony will take place in the Stephen Smith Center beginning at 12:00 noon. The U.S. Navy has requested that guests arrive by 11:30 a.m. dressed in either Business Attire or Service Uniform.

Seating is limited and reservations are required. Click here to register.

This event will be webcast live at www.jfklibrary.org/webcast.

Caroline Kennedy Unveils Groundbreaking Online Archive of President JFK

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Thomas Putnam, director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, demonstrates the JFK Digital Archive, during its launch as part of the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, at the National Archives in Washington, on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2011. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin.


WASHINGTON, DC.- To help mark the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and Caroline Kennedy, President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, today unveiled the nation’s largest online digitized presidential archive, providing unprecedented global access to the most important papers, records, photographs and recordings of President John F. Kennedy’s thousand days in office. The announcement was made in the Archivist's Reception Room in the National Archives building in Washington, D.C.

Until now, the national treasure of historical material housed in the Kennedy Presidential Library’s collection has been available only by a physical visit to the library itself. With the launch of the new digital archive at www.jfklibrary.org, students, teachers, researchers and members of the public now just need an internet connection to search, browse and retrieve original documents from the Kennedy Library’s collection, gaining a first-hand look into the life of President Kennedy and the issues that defined his administration.

“The Kennedy Library's Access to a Legacy project is a service to our nation. The digitization of archival records is becoming an essential means to allow the public greater access to our national treasures via websites, social media or the growing area of mobile applications," said David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States. “This initiative will open new areas of learning and discovery through the library's archives and will preserve precious documents on digital media for future generations.”

"My parents believed that history is one of our greatest teachers," said Caroline Kennedy, President of the Kennedy Library Foundation. "As young people increasingly rely on the internet as their primary source for information, it is our hope that the Library’s online archive will allow a new generation to learn about this important chapter in American history. And as they discover the heroes of the civil rights movement, the pioneers of outer space, and the first Peace Corps volunteers, we hope they too are inspired to ask what they can do for their country.”

The historic launch of the online archive comes more than four years after Senator Edward M. Kennedy first announced this unprecedented effort to digitize, describe, and electronically archive a selection of the Kennedy Library’s most important holdings, enabling world-wide access 24/7 via the internet. As the largest, most advanced digital archive created by a Presidential Library not “born digital,” the project can serve as a model for other presidential libraries and national and international archival institutions.

Included among the thousands of historical papers, documents and images that are now permanently preserved are precious and irreplaceable records of the nation’s struggle for Civil Rights; its conflict with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War; its efforts to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth; its commitment to public service through the creation of the Peace Corps; its prevention of a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and its embrace of American art and culture under the guidance of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

To manage a digitization project of this enormity, the archivists of the Kennedy Presidential Library prioritized the Library’s historic collections beginning with those that hold the highest research interest and significance. These collections include the President’s Office Files; the Personal Papers of John F. Kennedy; the Outgoing Letters of President John F. Kennedy; the JFK White House Photograph Collection; the JFK White House Audio Speech Collection; and the JFK White House Film and Video Collection. At launch, the archive features approximately 200,000 pages; 300 reels of audio tape, containing more than 1,245 individual recordings of telephone calls, speeches and meetings; 300 museum artifacts; 72 reels of film; and 1,500 photos. The sheer volume of digitized materials is unprecedented for presidential libraries whose collections were not born digitally.

Joining Caroline Kennedy and David Ferriero for the announcement of the archive launch were Sharon Fawcett, Assistant Archivist for Presidential Libraries; Thomas J. Putnam, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library; and Foundation Board member Edwin Schlossberg, husband of Caroline Kennedy and principle of ESI Design, who first envisioned a data asset management system that would enable the Kennedy Presidential Library to make its archives available to a world-wide audience.

The digitization initiative would not have been possible without the public/private partnership between the federally operated John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, a division of the National Archives and Records Administration, and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the 501 c 3 non-profit that secured significant financial support from private donors in order to help fund the project.

During the announcement, Caroline Kennedy also paid tribute to four leading corporations – AT&T, EMC Corporation, Iron Mountain and Raytheon Company – who stepped forward to offer the critical hardware, software and other in-kind technical expertise needed to make the pioneering initiative a reality. The four founding technical partners were represented at the launch by James W. Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President of External and Legislative Affairs for AT&T; Paul T. Dacier, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, EMC Corporation; Robert T. Brennan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Iron Mountain; and William H. Swanson, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Raytheon Company, and Vice Chairman of the Kennedy Library Foundation.

The Kennedy Presidential Library’s research facilities are among the busiest of presidential libraries. Its archives currently include more than 8.4 million pages of the personal, congressional and presidential papers of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and more than 40 million pages of over 300 other individuals who were associated with the Kennedy Administration or mid-20th Century American history. In addition, the archives hold more than 400,000 still photographs; 9,000 hours of audio recordings; 7.5 million feet of motion picture film; and 1,200 hours of video recordings. Digitization efforts are ongoing and additional material will continue to be added to the archive as it is scanned and described.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is one of 13 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and is supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Kennedy Presidential Library and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.

Caroline Kennedy Carries On Her Parents' Legacies

By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY

As a cute blonde toddler whose impromptu appearances at White House events delighted news photographers, Caroline Kennedy was her father's best political asset.

Today, as a willowy Park Avenue matron, she still is.

Former president John F. Kennedy's oldest and only surviving child has kept a lower public profile since her attempt to win one of New York's U.S. Senate seats last year degenerated into a political failure.

Now, she's stepping back into the spotlight to celebrate a political success: her father's.

Over the next three years, as the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library marks the 50th anniversary of a presidency that riveted the nation with its glamorous beginning and its tragic end, "She is going to be the one to take the principal role in the celebrations of her father's life," says John Culver, a longtime family friend.

Kennedy, 52, is working on three books to be published in conjunction with the festivities. She and her husband, New York artist and designer Edwin Schlossberg, also are helping the JFK Library and the Institute of Politics plan the commemoration of her father's presidency, from his election in November 1960 to his assassination three years later.

"She and Ed are in many ways the chief architects of how the 50th anniversary will roll out," said former Massachusetts senator Paul Kirk, a family confidant who served with Kennedy on the library foundation's board.

One of Kennedy's forthcoming books, due in fall 2011, has blockbuster potential: It is based on tapes of never-before published interviews her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, gave to historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. about her years as first lady.

Also next year, Kennedy and the JFK Library will issue a book for young adults commemorating her father's famous inaugural address, which urged a generation to "ask what you can do for your country." That will be followed in 2012 by an album of her father's family photos.

For most of her adult life, Kennedy has been the chief protector and promoter of her parents' legacy. For 23 years, she has served as president of the foundation that helps fund and direct her father's presidential library. After the death of her brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., in a 1999 plane crash, she took over his duties as a member of the advisory board to the Institute of Politics, established at Harvard University in 1966 by her mother and her father's brothers as a living memorial to the slain president. After her mother's death in 1994, Kennedy replaced her as honorary chairwoman of the American Ballet Theatre.

She already has edited several literary homages to her parents, including an anthology of her mother's favorite poems and a sequel to Profiles in Courage, her father's Pulitzer Prize-winning book about politicians who put principle above popular opinion.

Kennedy, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has largely shied away from political controversy and personal publicity for most of her life. An exception came in 2008 when she endorsed Barack Obama for president and persuaded her uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, to second her.

It came at a crucial moment, when Obama was reeling from defeat in the New Hampshire primary at the hands of Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a column for The New York Times, Kennedy said she was supporting Obama over Clinton, her home-state senator, because she felt he would be "a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them."

The effect was electrifying: "Camelot Crowns Obama," read one TV headline. The onetime first daughter began flowering as a politico. Kennedy became a regular surrogate on the campaign trail. Obama, who declared her "a very dear friend," named her to the inner circle that vetted his vice presidential choices.

After Obama's election, it briefly appeared as if she might be the next Kennedy in the Senate.

In December 2008, Kennedy let it be known that she was interested in the New York Senate seat that Clinton was leaving to become secretary of State. There was family history: Her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, served as New York's senator.

As she traveled upstate to meet with local politicians and to Harlem to break cornbread with Al Sharpton, Kennedy was trailed by a pack of reporters who parsed her every utterance, keeping count of her frequent "ums" and "you knows."

A Marist College poll showed Kennedy and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, her cousin Kerry's ex-husband, as the favorites to be appointed to the Senate seat. But her inability to articulate her reasons for seeking the coveted appointment drew mockery. "The lady hasn't yet said but one word in public about the race, about the issues or about virtually anything," the New York Daily News editorialized

Before Gov. David Paterson could announce his choice, Kennedy abruptly withdrew her name from consideration, creating confusion and recriminations that added to a list of embarrassments that ultimately drove Paterson's approval ratings so low he decided not to run for re-election.

Since then, Kennedy has kept her political efforts focused on others. Last year she held a fundraiser to help Cyrus Vance— whose father served as her father's secretary of the Army — win the Manhattan district attorney's election.

Earlier this year, she was at the White House when President Obama signed his landmark health care bill and paid tribute to the decades-long struggle by her beloved "Uncle Teddy" to see the legislation enacted.

She is also focused on the printed page. In addition to the books she's producing for the 50th anniversary of her father's presidency, Kennedy also is compiling an anthology of poetry aimed at women, due in spring; a collection of children's poems the following year, and for 2013, a travelogue about the historically themed trips she and her cousins took every summer with their uncle.

Now that Kennedy's daughters Rose and Tatiana are in their 20s and son John in his teens, some friends hope Kennedy will give politics another chance. "If she's at all inclined, I would hope she would," said Culver, a former Iowa senator.

Kennedy's sense of duty to her family and its political legacy was apparent in a fond eulogy she delivered last year at the wake for Edward Kennedy.

"Now Teddy has become a part of history," she said. "And we have become the ones who have to do all the things that he would have done, for us and for each other and for our country."