The National Archives announced on Friday the launch of Founders Online, a free research tool that allows researchers to electronically search through the papers of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Founders Online was made possible through a cooperative agreement between the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grant-making arm of the National Archives, and The University of Virginia (UVA) Press. In the future, project coordinators hope to digitize and publish over 175,000 documents for the online database.

For more information on Founders Online, the National Archives has produced a short video describing the project, posted below:

This post first appeared on AHA Today.