When I heard that Albert Einstein’s papers were going to be published free online, I was thrilled—at least initially. Putting scholarly archives online for people around the world to explore will be our era’s most transformative innovation in historical research.

Following in the footsteps of the National Archives’ “Founders Online” (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.) and the digitized archives of Mark Twain, Thomas Edison and many others, the online Einstein papers will be the most extensive such project to date. A consortium...