Fireworks-phobic Americans have a new excuse for celebrating the Fourth of July indoors this year, thanks to a landmark project aimed at launching the words of the Founders into the digital ether, from sea to shining sea.
Founders Online, a collaboration between the National Archives and the University of Virginia Press, replicates the nearly 120,000 documents included in the 242 printed volumes of the papers of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin, presented to the public in easily searchable digitized form for the first time. Some 55,000 unpublished documents will be added in the next three years.
“This resource will be of immense value for the public to understand both the world and intentions of the founders,†Mark H. Saunders, interim director of the press, said of the online trove, which includes items like a somewhat clunky early draft of the Declaration of Independence beginning, “Whereas George . . . king of Great Britain . . . heretofore entrusted with the exercise of the kingly office in this government hath endeavored to pervert the same into a detestable and insupportable tyranny . . .â€
Others praised the project as offering liberation from the tyranny of heavy bound tomes that scholars have groaned under since 1950, when Princeton University Press began publishing the modern documentary edition of Jefferson’s papers.
“This is huge,†David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, told The Washington Post. “I can remember from my earliest days in the libraries at M.I.T. as a shelver, shelving those blessed volumes.â€
