Into the Pool

The University of Maryland and the White House Correspondents’ Association are teaming up to provide a deep dive into the daily life of the U.S. president with a new digital archive of pool reports.

Pool reports are summaries of contact with the president written by a journalist when fellow members of the White House press corps can’t be present, be it at a photo op or on Air Force One, and made available to their peers. Under the partnership between UMD’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University Libraries and College of Information Studies, and the WCHA and Newseum Institute, these reports will be kept at the university and in a searchable online database.

The archive, expected to be accessible in the next two years, will also be the basis of new educational programs at UMD on presidential access and news coverage. The project will start with digital copies distributed in the Obama and Bush administrations before working to locate print copies for earlier presidencies.

“The University of Maryland is honored to have the opportunity to steward this valuable archive and research tool, a unique record of the U.S. presidency,” says Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Merrill College. “We’re proud to make it available to the public and to scholars around the world.”