The Walt Whitman Archives is an online collection that incorporates resources from libraries and collections from around the United States, and is affiliated with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This collection attempts to make electronically available the extensive amount of Whitman's written material. His work includes 6 editions of Leaves of Grass, poems, essays, letters, notebooks, and manuscripts. Whitman's work is often challenging to present. The goal of this online collection is to contribute to Whitman scholarship. Editions of Leaves of Grass and his various manuscripts have been previously inaccessible. The site also includes an extended biography, maps of Whitman-related locations, short essays by and about Whitman's friends and associates, contemporary reviews of his work, photographs of Whitman with annotations, introductions to each edition of Leaves of Grass, and an up-to-date bibliography of works regarding Whitman. All these resources are included as a means of providing context to Whitman's writings.
For each manuscript, a transcription is offerred, in addition to the ability to view images of the original. The images are offered in 3 sizes: small, large, and zoom. The zoom feature is tremendous, with the ability to show a great amount of crisp detail. When viewing the editions of Leaves of Grass, the user has the option to view digitized images of each individual page.
A section of the website is devoted to all known photographs of Whitman. Each JPEG image includes date, place, photographer, type, credit to what collection the image came from, and annotated notes.
This online collection is a comprehensive authority for scholars. The materials gathered here are scattered in various physical locations. To aid the researcher, the site offers links to finding aids from individual repositories.
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