Short Papers staff collected the major part of his papers and correspondence: the Université Paris Est-Créteil (UPEC) financed the purchase of the complete microfilmed collection of the Short Papers held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress (LOC), the Association française d’études américaines funded a two-month research grant at the LOC to collect Short correspondence in other collections, and thanks to a fellowship from the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello, we also gathered items there. In addition, we have obtained all the Short correspondence held in the Archivo histórico nacional (Madrid), the Archivo de Indias (Sevilla), the Archives diplomatiques (Paris), and the Nationaal Archief (The Hague). In the United States, we have collected documents from the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, the College of William and Mary Libraries, as well as from the American Philosophical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Rosenbach Museum, the Small Library at University of Virginia, the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Ky., the New York Historical Society and the New York Public Library. The corpus of the William Short papers in possession of the project amounts to approximately 12,000 documents spanning the years 1782 to 1853.

In 2025, the University of Virginia's Center for Digital Editing received a five-year NEH award to fund the editorial work of the Revolutionary and Early Republic documents. As partners of the Center, this grant will allow our project to make significant progress in securing and expanding public access to The Papers of William Short.