The availability of correspondences of authors and composers with their family, friends and colleagues, musicians, critics, illustrators, publishers, etc. is of great importance to literary scholars as well as to (art) historians, linguists, cultural sociologists etc. Letters do give an insight in and provide valuable information about, for instance the writing or composing process of an author or a composer, the dating, meaning and reception of a work, and provide further biographical details.

In view of its assignment to study and valorize the Flemish intellectual heritage, the [Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies](Centrum voor Teksteditie en Bronnenstudie-CTB) has launched the DALF project. DALF is an acronym for" Digital Archive of Letters in Flanders". It is envisioned as a growing textbase of correspondence material which can generate different products for both academia and a wider audience, and thus provide a tool for diverse research disciplines ranging from literary criticism to historical, diachronic, synchronic, and sociolinguistic research. The input of this textbase will consist of the materials produced in separate electronic edition projects. The DALF project can be expected to stimulate new electronic edition projects, as well as the international debate on electronic editions of manuscripts.