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. Dr John van Wyhe, the project’s director, 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. Images as well as texts are available online. There is no charge to use the website at darwin-online.org.uk. 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 per cent of the materials that will be provided by 2009, the bicentenary of the naturalist’s birth.

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