0.22 Rotunda: a university press starts a digital imprint  (Page 8/15)

As of Fall 2009, Rotunda has published digital editions of three of the Founding Fathers’ Papers as well as The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. Two more Founding Fathers’ editions, The Papers of James Madison and The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, are scheduled for completion in 2010. We have also made a proposal to the Franklin Papers for consideration by their board. As of fall 2009, the American Founding Era digital collection included 119 print volumes, containing 45,987 documents and 13,854 diary entries. Through data analysis, we identified 5,961 unique authors, and 3,925 unique recipients in the collection to date. The library review media have been very attentive to Rotunda’s new releases. Cheryl LaGuardia of Library Journal has faithfully reviewed both our collections as well as many individual publications. Her review of the Founding Era Collection up to publication of the Jefferson Papers appeared in September 2009. (External Link)& Choice magazine has reviewed the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson editions individually, and selected the Washington Papers as an Outstanding Academic Title, and an Outstanding Academic Website. It has chosen the Adams Papers Digital Edition as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009. Scholars are gradually discovering the resource as their institutions acquire the editions or as they see our displays at academic meetings. We have found that scholarly journals are very slow to review digital publications, or perhaps pass on them altogether.

Founding fathers’ papers and the federal government

I have told you how we came to prepare editions of some of the Founding Fathers’ Papers (FFP), but the account would not be complete without mentioning that we unexpectedly became caught up in a discussion in Congress about these projects. In December 2006 the Washington Post published an article by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, “In the Course of Human Events, Still Unpublished: Congress Pressed on Founders’ Papers.” Birnbaum reported:

An assortment of highbrow lobbyists—led by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and including presidential historian David McCullough, the librarian of Congress and the archivist of the United States—have been trying to persuade lawmakers to allocate more funds for the effort, known as the Founding Fathers Project. They also want Congress to demand that the papers, as well as the scholarship that accompanies them, be much more widely distributed, especially online.

The Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the FFP in February 2008 at which Stanley Katz represented the editors and presented sixty-seven pages of testimony. (External Link) The editors’ document mentioned that Rotunda was well into the work of preparing electronic editions:

Rotunda is building an American Founding Era collection of digital editions that will be creative in design, cross-searchable, and based on fully verified, scrupulously accurate texts. Rotunda will make available in a usable and responsible electronic form the writings of the founding generation. . . . The editors of the Founding Fathers Papers fully support this venture and see it as the fulfillment of our mission to make available to the nation and the world the words of the nation's founders.