The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library is located on UT Austin’s campus. (Eric Sheffield / The Daily Campus)

Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped before a joint session of Congress to a booming round of applause on the eve of Thanksgiving 1963.

He waited for the clapping to subside then looks down, released a resigned sigh and began to speak.

“All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today,” Johnson said.

But he had to be there.

He had to be there outside St. Matthew’s Cathedral two days earlier, marching alongside heads of state and royal family members.

He had to be there on Air Force One to take the oath of office and assume the responsibilities of a presidency that wasn’t supposed to be his.

And now, nearly fifty years after that day, he’s still there.

Johnson may be gone, but the legacy behind the man is housed at the University of Texas at Austin campus within the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.

As the opening of the Bush Center draws near, details from other presidential libraries may shed light on what to expect when the center opens to the public on May 1.

Each president leaves a lasting impression on the country that he helped shape. Johnson is no exception.

“He’s known as the Vietnam president,” Laura Eggert, the volunteer and visitor coordinator at the LBJ Library, said.

But war is only a fraction of what Johnson accomplished between 1963 and 1968.

He made tremendous leaps in civil rights and immigration laws. He established Medicare and Medicaid. He sent the first men to the moon by authorizing Apollo 8.

“We want to make sure that people who come to the library understand all the legislation that President Johnson passed,” Eggert said.

For example, the library allows visitors to walk in the president’s shoes through the events leading up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

One exhibit includes old-style telephones that library-goers can pick up to listen to taped conversations between LBJ and Martin Luther King, Jr.

These phone calls with the civil rights leader are just a small part of the 643 hours of recorded audio that the library added through renovations last year.

According to Tina Houston, the deputy director of the LBJ Library, it’s common to renovate presidential libraries every 10 years or so.

The Johnson Library had gone over 20 years without seeing an update, so on Dec. 22, 2012, which would have been Lady Bird Johnson’s 100th birthday, a renovated library was open to the public.

Many of these upgrades were made to keep up with changes in technology. Documents were digitized and posted online. High definition videos were added to each exhibit floor. Touch screens were added to displays.

“The exhibits are more interactive, more technical and more friendly for families,” Eggert said. “Everything is new.”

One of the main focuses in the redesign was making exhibits interesting for visitors of all ages.

“We wanted kids to be actively involved in the exhibits,” Houston said. “From my point of view, its very important to make the library appeal to kids.”

The renovations aim to spotlight not just the former president’s achievements, but also his personality.

Johnson was known in the political world as a man who could see the light even in dark times.

“Humor was a huge part of who LBJ was,” Eggert said. “And we think it’s important that people who come here know that.”

Within the library is a life-sized version of President Johnson that tells jokes to visitors, complete with animatronic hand motions and eyes.

Library officials also say that Johnson loved political cartoons, even when he was the object of the satire, and thus, a large collection of these caricatures are on display in the library.

Officials hope that these renovations are able to keep the nearly 40-year-old library up to par with what’s expected from the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the new library on the block.

After all, the two aren’t that different.

They’re both located on college campuses, they both include replicas of the Oval Office and the Situation Room as they were during the presidents’ time in office and they both were surrounded by controversy before their openings.

“There were some protests by students and faculty that didn’t want [the LBJ Library] here,” Houston said. “Vietnam is the main reason.”

This may sound all too familiar to those who followed SMU’s campaign to be home to the Bush Center.

Many faculty, students and activist groups protested the arrival of the center, in large part due to the Bush administration’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

In a 2007 editorial in The Daily Campus, John C. McQueen, a 1966 SMU alum, said, “It is not too late to save Southern Methodist University from a fate worse than destruction – an association with a man who will forever be known for violating every tenet of democracy and our constitutional frame of government.”

This is just one of thousands of comments speaking out against the 43rd President’s administration.

However, a key difference is that the Bush Center, unlike the LBJ Library, chose to include a think-tank within its walls.

UT Austin favored that an educational institution, the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, be built next to the library when plans were coming together in the late 1960s.

“The idea was that a school would help teach students, while still showing homage to Johnson,” Houston said. “[President Johnson] even taught at the school for a year.”

It made sense for LBJ to attach the school to his library. After all, LBJ’s first job was as a schoolteacher, and education was a priority throughout his administration.

Today, there’s even a class taught about Johnson’s presidency by Harry Middleton, who served as the director of the library from 1970 to 2002. Middleton also worked as a speechwriter and White House aide during Johnson’s presidency.

However, the Bush Center opted for a public policy center, the Bush Institute. This institute, established in 2009, is a leader in research for pressing national issues including education reform, economic growth and global health.

Another difference between the two libraries is where the presidential archives are located within the buildings.

It remains to be seen how visible Bush’s records will be, but it is known that all 70 million pages of documents will be kept in a 66,000 sq. ft. archival space located underneath the library.

However, officials say that the Johnsons were firm in their belief that nothing within the library should be hidden from the public eye.

“Mrs. Johnson believed that all the archives in the library should be seen by the public,” Eggert said.

And so, from the Great Hall, visitors can see the rows upon rows of red archival boxes located on the floors above.

The fact that the stacks are bright red, as opposed to traditional gray or brown, is just one of the Johnsons’ many quirks.

LBJ also had an eccentric fascination with pens.

The former president reportedly signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with over 75 different pens, which he gave to assorted members of Congress, the civil rights movement and others who helped make the bill possible.

The library also prominently displays an electric toothbrush, much like the ones that he would give out as gifts while in the Oval Office.

“I give these toothbrushes to friends,” Johnson said before his death in 1973, “for then I know from now until the end of their days, they will think of me the first thing in the morning and the last at night.”

It’s idiosyncrasies such as these that give presidential libraries personalities to match their namesakes.

The oddities of the Bush Center are yet to be known, but if the Johnson Library is any indication, we’ll have a better grasp of who President Bush was, and is, once April 25 rolls around.