The Walt Whitman Archive is a DH project aimed at providing “scholars, students, and general readers,” access to the vast catalog of media from and about Walt Whitman (May 31 1819 – March 26 1892). The archive is co-directed by Kenneth M. Price of University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ed Folsom of University of Iowa. The archive includes books, periodicals, translations, manuscripts, notebooks, scribal documents, letters, pictures, sounds, and commentary on Whitman’s life. The site covers all mediums regarding Whitman and his life.
Significance
Being that it is among the oldest, if not the oldest, Digital Humanities projects, the Walt Whitman Archive has set the precedent for what makes a functional and effective DH project. The archive includes high resolution photographs of Whitman’s hand-written works and allow users to see the poet’s process of composition. This quality of openness sets the Walt Whitman Archive apart from other archives who do not share these compositional subtleties.
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