Story highlights White House has begun transferring Obama's records, including emails, to the National Archives

They will end up at the Obama library in Chicago

Washington (CNN) When most office workers leave a job, clearing out their desk involves a cardboard box and maybe a paper shredder. When the office worker is the President of the United States, it means military cargo planes, police-escorted tractor trailers -- and getting nowhere near that shredder.

On Tuesday, the White House began the laborious process of transferring all of President Barack Obama's records -- his memos, his letters, his schedules, and, yes, his emails -- to the National Archives, which under federal law takes ownership of the documents when Obama leaves office.

At the downtown Washington Archives headquarters on Tuesday, uniformed US service members were busy loading palettes of cardboard boxes stuffed with Obama administration records onto orange forklifts. The boxes, which were carefully catalogued with green slips of paper and wrapped in clear plastic, were shuttled from a loading dock and into the back of a white Ryder moving van, which departed the building destined for a secure warehouse.

Like presidents before him, Obama is leaving office with the story of his presidency boxed and ready for the history books -- at least the parts that aren't declared top secret or otherwise unsuitable for public consumption.

George Washington had his diaries and letters hauled off in wagons to Mount Vernon, where he could consult them in the privacy of his own study. The National Archives got involved after Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, managing the deceased chief executive's papers at his library in Hyde Park, New York.

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