Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library is part of the National Archives and Records Administration's presidential library system. The library is located at 1000 Beal Avenue on the north campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where Ford was a student and football player. This repository houses documents and audio-visual materials on the life, career, and presidency of Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States.

Congressman Ford initially began donating his congressional papers to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, his alma mater (B.A. 1935), in 1963. As his presidency drew to a close, Ford offered to donate his presidential materials to a presidential library that would be built on the university's campus and administered by the National Archives. The Library was dedicated on 27 April 1981.

The Ford Library is currently the only National Archives presidential library that is physically separate from its presidential museum, although both sites share a common director. The Gerald R. Ford Museum is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford's old congressional district and hometown, 130 miles west of Ann Arbor.

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    “We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government—a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.”
    —Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)

    “In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.”
    —Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)

    “That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep forever. Never will I wake these echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again ...”
    —Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)