Feelings run high about the John F. Kennedy Library's imminent arrival in Harvard Square. Should it be built; shouldn't it? All parts of it? For what reasons? An examination of the way in which three of the five presidential libraries already in operation have developed may help clarify local library issues.

Late this summer I visited the Truman, Eisenhower, and Hoover libraries. These midwestern facilities differ in setting and mood and none is located in a congested urban area. But they all suggest what a presidential library may mean for Cambridge.

One soon becomes aware that a presidential library is more than its name implies. It is a research facility and repository for a president's papers and associated archival material. It fulfills important historical and scholarly functions, and appropriately, is open only to qualified researchers. What is popularly thought of as a presidential library is, in fact, a presidential museum. These adjuncts of presidential libraries are not just minor display areas "open to the public." They are major tourist attractions of undoubted interest and growing appeal.

The Harry S. Truman Library (library and museum, that is) occupies a single large and dignified U-shaped building on a beautifully landscaped tract of 14 acres in Independence, Missouri--Truman's hometown. Independence was a boom town in the first half of the 19th century, one of the major outfitting centers for wagon trains heading west. By the turn of the century, it had become an agricultural and livestock center. Today, although Independence is steadily being pulled into the vortex of metropolitan Kansas City, its center remains a prosperous, pleasant county seat.

The Truman Library, a few miles to the north of Interstate 70, is on Route 24, one of those now typical four-lane highways which take dreary second place to limited-access throughways. New motels, advertising their accessibility to the library, cluster near interstate exists--Hilton, Sheraton, Ramada, Howard Johnson, Travel Lodge, and Holiday Inn. As one leaves the throughway and approaches The Truman Library, Route 24 is lined with used car lots, supermarkets, gas stations, fast food stores, retail outlets, and light industry. The library and the pleasant municipal park across the highway make a striking contrast.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Center is in Abilene, a town of 7000 in the plains of central Kansas. A 19th century railroad terminus for huge numbers of cattle being driven from the open range in Texas, Abilene was a classic frontier town. Wild Bill Hickok was once marshall there.

Gradually, Abilene changed to a slow-paced community catering mostly to retired farmers. Until the Eisenhower Center was built, "Abilene wasn't going anywhere," as a local motel owner put it. Today the sign at the city limits reads: WELCOME TO ABILENE, MIDWEST TOURIST CAPITAL, EISENHOWER CENTER TWO MILES.

"That Eisenhower Center's sure made a difference," a waitress told me. "Seems like all our customers are going there."

To get to the Eisenhower Center, I left Interstate 70 just north of Abilene. It was immediately clear that this was not the approach to just any small rural town in sparsely populated central Kansas. The road looked more like a thoroughfare in metropolitan Kansas City. Neon signs, one after the other, line both sides of the road for a mile. Huge street lights make a continuous archway of glaring light until at last the eating places, supermarkets, liquor stores, motels, and gas stations give way to the still quiet residential section and the original business district. Near the old railroad station, on the southern edge of Abilene, farm equipment is displayed outdoors. The Eisenhower Center is just across the railroad tracks.

"Center" is an appropriate word to describe the 20-acre site. Like a shopping center, there are a number of parts to it. The library and the museum are in separate buildings. Eisenhower's boyhood home has been restored. The former president and his infant first born son are buried in the chapel-like Place of Meditation. In a focal arc, five large Memorial Pylons are dedicated to Eisenhower's parents, the six Eisenhower brothers, members of the armed services, democracy, and the home where the president spent his childhood. And still the Center grows; a large new visitors' reception facility is under construction.

An assortment of tourist developments has mushroomed on adjacent land. Across from the main entrance to the center is the Greyhound Hall of Fame--honoring not buses, but dogs; more of these racers are bred in Kansas than any other state. At the back of the site are the Dickinson County Historical Museum, the Museum of Independent Telephony, and Sculpture Hall. ("Thirtv-one years of free-hand carvings. 1917 Model T Roadster was over two years in the making. Weighs over 200 pounds. Water in the radiator. Admission $1.25--10 or more, $1.00. Bus drivers and sponsors free.")

To the south are the Hall of Generals Wax Museum and the new Old Abilene Town, "an authentic replica of the cattle capital as it was during its roaring hey-days..." As part of this enterprise, a stage coach filled with paying tourists plies up and down the dirt road along the back of the Library building. Just behind the wax museum is a Micro Zoo ("100's of Microscopic Animals and Plants. Projected Alive...A Living Educational Exhibit"). Not surprisingly, there are several fast food stores. And two private campgrounds ("Feel free to inspect our restrooms"). In the campground I looked over, 33 Winnebago-type mobile homes were registered.

Finally, in this thriving tourist area, is the Chisholm Trail Souvenir Shop. Here in "Kansas's Largest Souvenir Shop," I counted 94 kinds of things marked Eisenhower Center and/or Abilene, Kansas. Pillow covers, pencil sets, and toy cars were not surprises. Toothpick holders and babies training pants were.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library is on the Hoover Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa, where Herbert Hoover was born in 1874, one of three children of the village blacksmith. This eastern part of Iowa is lovely, rolling, fertile farm country, and the historic site itself is a beautifully maintained 180 acre tract with open land, trees, and a meandering stream. The gravesites of Herbert Hoover and his wife, simple granite monuments, are on a wooded knoll. The village of West Branch, with a population of only 1300, seems to merge into the park-like site.

The historic site is under the supervision of the National Park Service, which is creating a Sturbridge Village-like community reminiscent of the West Branch of Hoover's boyhood. Done with imagination and taste, the settlement includes the tiny, whitewashed, two-room house where Hoover was born; a Quaker Meeting House; and a functioning blacksmith shop. Recently the government bought ten little period houses where Park personnel now live. A schoolhouse is soon to be added, and there are plans for putting into operation a working replica of a 19th century farm. Even though many of the original commercial buildings of West Branch itself now cater to tourists, the area as a whole looks much as it must have in Hoover's youth.