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Charles Darwin’s works go online
The complete works of one of history’s greatest
scientists, Charles Darwin, are being published online.
The project run by Cambridge University has digitised some 50,000 pages of
text and 40,000 images of original publications – all of it searchable.Surfers
with MP3 players can even access downloadable audio files.The resource is aimed
at serious scholars, but can be used by anyone with an interest in Darwin and
his theory on the evolution of life.”The idea is to make these important
works as accessible as possible; some people can only get at Darwin that
way,” said Dr John van Wyhe, the project’s director.One big collection
Dr van Wyhe has spent the past four years searching the globe for copies of Darwin’s
own materials, and works written about the naturalist and his breakthrough
ideas on natural selection.The historian said he was inspired to build the
library at darwin-online.org.uk when his own efforts to study Darwin while at
university in Asia were frustrated.”I wrote to lots of people all over the
world to get hold of the texts for the project and I got a really positive
reaction because they all liked the idea of there being one big
collection,” he told BBC News.Darwin Online features many newly
transcribed or never-before-published manuscripts written by the great man.These
include a remarkable field notebook from his famous Beagle voyage to the
Galapagos Islands, where detailed observations of the wildlife would later
forge his scientific arguments.
Free use
The real artefact was stolen in the 1980s and is still missing, but the text
has been transcribed from a microfilm copy made two decades earlier.”It is
astonishing to see the notebook that Darwin had in his pocket as he walked around
the Galapagos – the scribbled notes that he took as he clambered over the
lava,” said Randal Keynes, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin.”If
people can read it on the web and they learn that it was stolen then I think
there is more chance that this very important piece of national heritage is
recovered,” he told BBC News. Other texts appearing online for the first
time include the first editions of the Journal Of Researches (1839), The
Descent Of Man (1871), The Zoology Of The Voyage Of HMS Beagle (1838-43) and
the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Origin Of Species, the pivotal tome
that elucidated his thoughts on evolution.There is no charge to use the
website. Most texts can be viewed either as colour originals or as fully
formatted electronic transcriptions. There are also German, Danish and Russian
editions.Users can also peruse more than 150 supplementary texts, ranging from
reference works to contemporary reviews of Darwin’s books, obituaries and
recollections.At the moment the site contains about 50% of the materials that
will be provided by 2009, the bicentenary of the naturalist’s birth.”The
family has always wanted Darwin’s papers and manuscripts available to anyone
who wants to read them. That everyone around the world can now see them on the
web is simply fantastic,” said Mr Keynes.
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