The core of Digital Thoreau will be a TEI-encoded text of Walden enriched by scholarly annotations, links, images, and social tools that enable users to create conversations around the text.

The annotations from Walden: An Annotated Edition, edited by Thoreau biographer Walter Harding, together with digital assets from the the Thoreau Society’s Harding Collection (curated by the Thoreau Institute Library at The Walden Woods Project) provide a base layer of context on which future layers will be built.