John Jay Papers Relaunch, 3/2006.
On March 31, 2006, Columbia
University Libraries launched a new, enhanced version
of the Papers of John Jay as a digital
sustainability initiative of the Libraries Digital
Program. The project to expand the database's
content and functionality began in March 2003,
and resulted in the addition of over 1,500 new
documents consisting of some 12,000 page images. In
addition, we have added 1,300 new color scans of
material in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript
Library not previously included.
The database now has a total 13,390 of catalog
records and 11,434 viewable documents consisting
of some 30,000 viewable page images. It
includes holdings from over 90 libraries, museums
and historical societies from the U.S. and Europe. See additional
statistics.
Among the system enhancements included in the
2003-2006 project were: migration from the original
SQL database backend to an XML / Lucene-based architecture;
an entirely rewritten search engine; better and
faster image display; and a redesigned look and
feel. |
Project Background. The Papers
of John Jay database was launched initially
in December 2002 funded by a two-year grant from
the National Endowment for the Humanities and
additional funding from the Florence Gould Foundation.
Institutions represented
in the database in addition to Columbia, whose
5,000 original documents form the core of
the collection, include the Library of Congress,
the National Archives, and more than 90 repositories
in the United States, Britain, France, Spain and
around the world, whose cooperation in the project
is gratefully acknowledged. A full list of participating
institutions is available on the project's Web
site.
"The Papers of John
Jay" was created chiefly from photocopies
of documents intended for possible inclusion in
Richard B. Morris's proposed four-volume edition
of selected unpublished Jay papers. Unfortunately
only two volumes of the series appeared before
Morris’s
death in 1989, John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary,
Unpublished Papers 1745-1780 (New York: Harper & Row,
1975) and John Jay: The Winning of
the Peace, Unpublished Papers, 1780-1784 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1980). When
the project was discontinued in 1996, the
photocopies were transferred to Columbia's Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, where they
supplement a collection of more than 38 linear
feet of Jay family papers. An Advisory Board,
chaired by Professor Bushman and including prominent
historians and documentary editors, originally
proposed the creation of an electronic database
as the first step in providing widespread access
to the research collection.
The John Jay database is
a joint project of Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript
Library and Columbia Libraries Digital Library
Program Division.
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