Samuel Hartlib (c1600-62), a great seventeenth-century 'intelligencer' and man of science, set out to record all human knowledge and make it universally available for the education of all mankind. His correspondence, which runs to over 25,000 folios of original materials, came to the University Library in the 1960s. The full-text electronic edition realises Hartlib's vision some 300 years later.

The project's objective was to create a complete electronic edition with full-text transcription and facsimile images of all 25,000 seventeenth-century manuscripts. This seven-year project culminated in the publication in 1996 of two CD-ROMs by University Microfilms in Michigan. An enlarged edition, incorporating many Hartlib materials from libraries around the world, was published on CD-ROM by the Humanities Research Institute in July 2002. This new, online edition provides free access to all the content available on the original CD-ROM versions. Full introductory and background information will be made available shortly.