Inside the Museum
Inside the Museum
Nixon Presidential Library

Presidential Archives

Nixon Library Collections
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The archives at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum hold the records of one of the best-documented presidencies in American history:
  • 46 million pages of documents - from handwritten notes to declassified top-secret memos.
  • 500,000 photographs that provide a visual catalog of Richard Nixon's entire life and career, including 300,000 from the White House Photo Office collection.
  • 9,000 hours of audio and visual holdings, one of the most extensive collections in the Presidential library system.
  • 2,600 hours of currently released contents from President Nixon's White House tapes.

Updated October 2024
Posted January 2024

Nixon Library Archives Camera

Nixon Library Archives

Richard Nixon Research Library
Research Library

Nixon Yellow Notepads
Nixon's Yellow Notepads
Early in his career, Richard Nixon developed the habit of writing out his thoughts on legal pads. These yellow notepads became a hallmark of Richard Nixon's way of working and thinking. Whether weighing different sides of an issue, drafting the main points of a speech, or noting down the content of conversations, Nixon honed his thinking through writing.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library's collection of thousands of pages of these yellow pad notes - covering from his first days in Congress in 1947 to shortly before his death in 1994 - reveal what biographer Richard Reeves called "the most important dialogue in the White House": "the introvert's dialogue with himself."

Nixon Yellow Notepads

RICHARD NIXON:I went up to my study in our place and sat down in the easy chair, as I usually did, with the yellow pad ...
- 1983

Nixon Yellow Notepads
Nixon's Yellow Notepads
During his preparation for his historic trip to the People's Republic of China, President Nixon made notes about "what they want," "what we want," and "what we both want."