Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses

FAIN: RQ-50183-05

Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, MA 02215-3631)
Conrad Edick Wright (Project Director: November 2004 to August 2005)
C. James Taylor (Project Director: August 2005 to July 2009)

Digital online publication of 35 previous printed volumes, including The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, the Winthrop Papers, The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, the Adams Family Correspondence, The Legal Papers of John Adams, and the Papers of John Adams. (36 months)

The Massachusetts Historical Society requests a grant of $299,792 over three years to digitize 35 volumes of edited documents, a total of about 17,600 pages. At the completion of the project scholars, students, and the general public will be able to use important texts heretofore usually available only in major research libraries. The Society will make the text available free of charge on its web site (www.masshist.org). It will display as page images with underlying fully searchable, encoded text. This initiative builds on the Society's long history as a documentary publisher and its growing record of offering digital resources. The initiative also prepares the Society to issue future titles digitally.