 The Heinlein Prize Trust and the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) have combined resources to launch The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archives, an online resource that, when complete, will contain electronic copies of every document in UCSC's Heinlein collection, "giving the collection protection through digital immortality while vastly increasing its availability to academics and fans."
The online archive "brings the entire Archives collection of author Robert A. Heinlein [1907-1988] to the Internet. With over 106,000 pages of documents online for its initial launch this month, the entire collection—available online to all users—will include over 200,000 pages of documents and information."
The first collection to be fully uploaded is the Opus/Manuscripts collection, which includes files of all Heinlein's published works with his notes, research, early drafts and edits of manuscripts, to the final published form. "These files provide both a look at Heinlein's creative process and add insights into his intent and the meaning in his stories. Other collections include the Heinleins' business and personal correspondence, scrapbooks, photo albums, and unpublished works. Launch availability in these sections include Heinlein's correspondence with editor John W. Campbell, Jr., a family scrapbook from his childhood, and business correspondence with agent Lurton Blassingame from the 1970s."
There is a charge to download the files. According to the Trust, the cost "averages one cent per page across the collection. Academics interested in writing on Robert A. Heinlein's work for publication may apply for a research grant and, if approved, can receive the documents they require at no charge." A quick look at the first manuscripts in the short stories collection seems to show minimum charges of $3 per file.
To give you an idea of the size of this archive, the OPUS Manuscripts collction is broken down into sections, including anthologies (23 files availabled), articles (49), interviews (9), never published (32), non-fiction (16), novelettes (16), novellas (30), novels (289), other (13), prefaces (4), reviews (6), scripts (33), short stories (31), and speeches (10).
|
