After retiring from the Senate, Pryor donated $250,000 in unused campaign contributions to the University of Arkansas to help found a center on oral history. One of the center's first big projects, he says, will be documenting the oral history of Clinton's time in public life.

By collecting his speeches on tape and interviewing those who served under him, the project aims to record not only Clinton's presidential administration but his terms as governor of Arkansas and the state's attorney general.

Pryor acknowledges the undertaking will be "mammoth." But eventually, he says, historians will be able to download parts of the oral history from a website--going back to Clinton's first address to the Arkansas state legislature, which he delivered in 1979 at the age of 32.

"I'm a big buff on oral history," Pryor says.

He organized an IOP event on Wednesday night billed as "an evening with Richard Nixon." He brought in a historian at the National Archives to play 45 minutes of the tapes Nixon recorded in the Oval Office during his presidency. He says he plans another evening of oral history, next time with Lyndon B. Johnson.

"I'm no historian but I like history," he says. "I think it kind of binds us together."

Turbulent Legacy

The U.S. is witnessing a renewal of interest in history, Pryor says, particularly in presidential history, which will make the library a major draw for the state capital.