I have just been informed that Mersenne never received an announcement
of the launch of Darwin Online. Just in case any interested list members
have not heard about it, I post this new announcement.
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
(http://darwin-online.org.uk/) was launched in October 2006.
The site contains at least one exemplar of all of Darwin's publications
in searchable fully formatted electronic text and colour images of the
original. Both can be viewed side-by-side. There are also many newly
transcribed manuscripts. The site includes the largest Darwin
bibliography
and catalogue of his manuscripts ever published. Almost all previously
published manuscript transcriptions are
included. There is an extensive collection of ancillary works such as
secondary references works, recollections by his children, obituaries,
book reviews, scientific descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens,
biographies and important works for understanding Darwin and his
contexts.
Some of these extras include gems like the admissions books from
Christ's College, Cambridge or Darwin's first mention in print (Grant,
1827).
Almost all of the editions and works appear online here for the first
time such as the 1st editions of Zoology of the Beagle, Voyage of the
Beagle, Descent of Man and the classic Life and Letters and the
unexpurgated Autobiography edited by Nora Barlow.
Darwin's works are also available as free (machine-read for now) audio
mp3 downloads.
There are also translations into Danish, Norwegian, German and Russian.
All of the contents are accessible from a single table of contents page:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html
A custom-made search engine integrates the catalogues and searches all
the documents and can be fine-tuned to limit many fields (author, date,
language etc.)
Since its launch the site has received an unprecedented amount of media
and public attention. The site server has recorded over 24 million hits
from over 170 countries and currently there are about 25,000 mouse
clicks on the site per day.
And it's completely free of charge!
The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Original press release: http://darwin-online.org.uk/release.html
In case you have already seen the site, but are wondering what has been
added since your last visit, see:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/whatsnew.html
Don't forget that Darwin's invaluable correspondence is available at the
website of
the Darwin Correspondence Project
(http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Departments/Darwin/)
--
Dr John van Wyhe
Director
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
University of Cambridge
CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1RX
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
Fax: 01223 (7)65276
Bye-Fellow Christ's College, Cambridge
|