Papers of Martin Van Buren

In 2014, Cumberland University relaunched the Papers of Martin Van Buren project with the goal of digitizing the documents and making them freely accessible online.

[2] Like many of his contemporaries, Martin Van Buren understood the importance of his political papers and viewed them as historical records.

[3][4] The Papers of Martin Van Buren project was officially launched at Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 1969, headed by Dr. Walter L. Ferree.

Previously, Van Buren's papers were scattered among several different repositories, including the Library of Congress, and many were held in private hands.

[5] The original goal of the Penn State project was to release a letterpress edition, which would be published in two series, totaling fifteen to twenty volumes.

[11] The project was officially launched in February 2016 and has partnered since that time with the University of Virginia's Center for Digital Editing.

The resultant transcribed document matches the original as close as possible, retaining errors such as misspelled words and unconventional capitalization.

[25] Documents published on the Van Buren Papers website are all verified first-pass transcriptions: they have been reviewed by an editor once but may still have errors and missing words.

The project is also publishing an annotated four-volume print edition of Van Buren's most important letters and speeches with the University of Tennessee Press.