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Collections
I. Founding Collections – Launched with www.ConSource.org September 2007
o Description: Includes 89 days of James Madison’s handwritten notes during the Federal Convention of 1787 from May 25-September 17.
o Text Provenance: taken from volumes 1 and 2 of Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 as found on the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty, which had to be mildly corrected
o Image Provenance: taken from the Library of Congress’ (LOC’s) microfilm of the presidential papers of James Madison, for which I believe we received the entire presidential papers, not just the Constitutional Convention records, which was digitized by iArchives. Initially, we posted the notes as copied by James Madison’s nephew and later were told by a scholar about the error. Eleesha Tucker went back to the digitized microfilm and found Madison’s notes in his own handwriting.
o Constitutional Cross-Referencing (CCR) Status: completed by Seun Adebiyi, ConSource legal research fellow in 2007. Approved by Justice Willet.
o Description: Includes 84 letters to the editor by “Publius” (coauthored by Jay, Madison & Hamilton) published in New York newspapers and widely republished across the nation as the debate of ratification of the new Constitution waged in 1787 and ’88.
o Text Provenance: OCRed by iArchives from a subset of the larger Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution by John Kaminski called Commentaries on the Constitution on BYU shelves. We initially did not have one volume, and Lorianne Updike personally made copies of the pages needed from that volume.
o Image Provenance: purchased mostly from the American Antiquarian Society.
o Constitutional Cross-Referencing (CCR) Status: completed by Seun Adebiyi, ConSource legal research fellow and redone in 2008 by Eric Rogers. Approval TBD.
o Description: This collection of 152 documents and expanding includes the responses to the Federalist Papers in New York newspapers and other letters to the editor both for and against the Constitution printed in sundry newspapers in the thirteen original states.
o Text Provenance: OCRed by iArchives from a subset of the larger Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution by John Kaminski called Commentaries on the Constitution on BYU shelves. We initially did not have one volume, and Lorianne Updike personally made copies of the pages needed from that volume.
o Image Provenance: Purchased from sundry archives, still needs to be completed.
o Constitutional Cross-Referencing (CCR) Status: completed by Seun Adebiyi, ConSource legal research fellow. Approval TBD.
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State Ratification Debates for Seven States (DE, PA, NJ, GA, CT, MA, VA)
o Description: Includes official journal notes and newspaper reports of the debates in seven of the thirteen original states, or 362 documents.
o Text Provenance: OCRed by iArchives from a subset of the larger Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution by John Kaminski owned by BYU for the state ratification debates.
o Image Provenance: Purchased from sundry archives, still needs to be completed.
o Constitutional Cross-Referencing (CCR) Status: completed by Seun Adebiyi, ConSource legal research fellow. Approval TBD.
o Description: This collection of 202 documents includes the official debates in the House of Representatives (the Senate meetings were closed and no notes were taken), drafts of the Bill of Rights, and newspaper reports of the proceedings.
o Text Provenance: OCRed by iArchives from Creating the Bill of Rights, which ConSource purchased.
o Image Provenance: Purchased from sundry archives, still needs to be completed.
o Constitutional Cross-Referencing (CCR) Status: completed by Seun Adebiyi, ConSource legal research fellow. Approved by Maeva Marcus.
II. 2008 Collections
o Description: This collection consists of 16,370 personal letters to and from George Washington, military records, and speeches by the first president.
o Text Provenance: taken from UVA’s Rotunda project, with copyrightable elements removed.
o Image Provenance: no images to date.
o CCR status: Several years during the Constitution’s Creation have been reviewed by law students. Unapproved.
o Description: fourteen state constitutions and charters, totaling 25 documents, which pre-date 1787.
o Text Provenance: taken by Julie Silverbrook from various online archival sources.
o Image Provenance: Five images are currently viewable on ConSource.org. The remaining images will be procured by Hugh Cherry.
o CCR status: TBD.
o Description: this collection of 5 documents includes many charters of freedom, including the Magna Charta, Mayflower Compact, English Declaration of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and Mayflower Compact.
o Text Provenance: Gathered by Julie Silverbrook from various online archival sources.
o Image Provenance: Gathered by Julie Silverbrook from various archives – high resolution images still need to be gathered.
o CCR status: TBD.
o Description: this collection of 93 days of Convention debates and 419 addition documents includes the private correspondence and diaries of Constitutional Convention delegates and various drafts of the Constitution.
o Text Provenance: ½ of these documents were taken from volume 3 of Max Farrand’s Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 as found on the Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty. The other ½ were taken from Jim Hutson’s 1987 bicentennial supplement to Max Farrand’s volumes. There are still notes in volumes 1 and 2 that should be added to this collection into subcollections for each notetaker’s (Yates, Morris, Mason, etc.) records.
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR status: TBD.
o Description: these two collections of 16 documents include the official and unofficial records of these state ratification debates, who ratified the Constitution after the Bill of Rights were passed by Constitution (but not yet ratified by all states) in 1788.
o Text Provenance: taken from unpublished digital transcriptions on CD from John Kaminski.
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR status: TBD.
o Description: this collection of 166 documents includes the official and unofficial records of New York’s hotly-debated contest over the ratification of the Constitution.
o Text Provenance: four volumes from John Kaminski’s Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution owned by BYU, scanned by iArchives
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Description: This collection of 583 documents contains the writings and letters of the delegate to the Constitutional Convention who remained in Philadelphia until the signing of the Constitution, but refused to sign the document himself because it lacked a declaration of rights.
o Text Provenance: taken from three purchased, NHPRC-approved scanned volumes by iArchives
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Proofreading: TBD.
o Description: This collection of 55 documents contains the most widely-published political sermons of the Founding, which constituted 75% of all political tracts.
o Text Provenance: scanned by iArchives from a two volume work by Elliot Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, purchased by ConSource.
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Proofreading: TBD.
III. Approved Collections for 2009
o Description - There are various drafts of the constitution housed at several institutions, but there is no comprehensive collection of them. The Constitutional Sources Project would be the first organization to put all of these documents together into one collection on ConSource. This collection will include the original and amended Virginia Plan, the notes and August 6th report from the Committee on Detail penned by James Wilson, Constitutional Convention delegates’ personal copies of the printed version of this report with hand-written notes penned in the margins, the report from the Brearly Committee on the presidency, and the notes and September 12th report from the Committee of Style penned by Gouverneur Morris.
o Description – 249 volumes available to the Constitutional Convention Delegates during the summer of 1787 at the Library Company of Philadelphia started by the subscription library of Benjamin Franklin’s junto group in the mid-1750s.
o Description:. This collection currently stands at 38 volumes, and contains the writings and papers of the man who was one of the most widely know Americans at the time of the Founding.
o Text Provenance: scanned by iArchives from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, published by Yale University Press. The volumes used are owned by the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Proofreading: TBD.
o Description: A 30 volume set which includes documents from Madison work as a Congressman, Secretary of State, and President.
o Text Provenance: The University of Chicago published the first 10 volumes, and the University of Virginia has published the remaining 20, projecting that the entire collection will reach at least 45 volumes before completion.
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Proofreading: TBD.
o Description:. This collection comes from the 27 volumes published by the Columbia University Press, and contains the writings of the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, as well as the personal letters he sent and received.
o Text Provenance: TBD
o Image Provenance: TBD.
o CCR: TBD.
o Proofreading: TBD. |
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