Darwin's work digitised and online

Project aims to have all of his writings online by 2009


19 October 2006 14:19 GMT / By Amber Maitland

The complete writings of Charles Darwin are now online and available to anyone thanks to a project run by Cambridge University.

The project's director, Dr John van Wyhe was inspired to start collecting Darwin's works and digitising them after being frustrated at the difficulty of finding his material while living in Asia.

At darwin-online.org.uk, anyone can view scans or read transcribed writings by Darwin, or even download audio files.

“The idea is to make these important works as accessible as possible”, van Wyhe told the BBC. The collection features some very hard-to-find and, in some cases, never-before-published works, like Darwin's handwritten field notebooks from the voyage of the Beagle to the Galapagos. Van Wyhe said he has receive positive reactions from people from whom he solicited texts, as they “liked the idea of there being one big collection”.

There are also over 150 secondary texts about Darwin and his work on the site. As yet, only 50% of the material available to the project has been digitised, but it's hoped that by 2009, Darwin's 200th birthday, all of it will be online.
Related
Full tags
Software, Online, Reference Software, Cambridge University, Darwin

share print story pdf email story

Recommended articles


Search

Loading

Follow


Best iPad 2 apps

We detail the best iPad 2 and iPad apps in the app store Which iPad app should you download?

Windows 8

All the features and details of the new Microsoft operating system explained What's new in Windows 8?

iPad 3 rumours

What comes next? We look at the possible features, leaks, images, specs and more

Pocket-lint poll

Q. Will you be buying a PS Vita?

Vote YES Vote NO

» LAST TIME
When asked Will Samsung be making a mistake if the Galaxy S III isn't shown at Mobile World Congress in February? 51% said yes and 49% said no