Franklin Roosevelt in the White House was much impressed by an account of Abraham Lincoln's life in which Paul Angle chronicles his ‘Day-by-Day Activities’ from birth to death. Roosevelt told his associates one of the first tasks of historians should be to construct a similar day-by-day chronology of his own life in the White House. On 26 January 1994 in the Senate Majority Leader's Office the Roosevelt Library finally launched such a project: FDR: Day-by-Day. The chronology will initially be based on the White House Usher's Diaries, the Presidential Trip Logs, and the earlier efforts of the documentary film maker Pare Lorentz to reconstruct every day of Roosevelt's life. With additions from scholars, the Library aims to create a constantly evolving database which will be available through the Internet.

The project testifies to a seemingly insatiable appetite for more and more biographical detail about Roosevelt. There are no fewer than four multi-volume biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, some still to be completed. There is no let up in the production of single-volume biographies of the President, both concise and substantial, popular and scholarly. In addition there are at least two multi-volume studies of Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, whose own life has been the subject of a plethora of biographies, including the first of a projected two-volume definitive study. Most recently, the activities of husband and wife in World War II have been massively chronicled.