The Walt Whitman Archive endeavors to make Whitman's vast work freely and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. Whitman, America's most influential poet and a writer of global renown, is the most challenging of all American authors in terms of the textual difficulties his work presents. His major life work, , went through six very different editions, each of which was issued in a number of formats, creating a book that is probably best studied as numerous distinct creations rather than as a single revised work. His many other writings—varied and significant—include fiction, notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, marginalia, and voluminous journalistic articles. Drawing on the resources of libraries and collections from around the world, the Whitman Archive is the most comprehensive record of works by and about Whitman—and continues to grow. The Archive is directed by Matt Cohen (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), and Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), with ongoing contributions from many other editor-scholars, students, information professionals, and technologists.