Darwin unlimited

The largest collection of Darwin's writings ever published appeared last month on the website The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online (http://darwin-online.org.uk). Never before has so much Darwin material, and so many rare and widely dispersed items, been brought together in one place and made available free of charge. The site currently offers more than 50,000 pages of searchable text and 40,000 images of both publications and transcribed manuscripts. Most of the materials are available both as fully formatted electronic text and colour images of the originals. Darwin's works are also available as free machine-read audio mp3 files. The project is designed and directed by John van Wyhe of Christ's College, University of Cambridge. The website also includes the largest Darwin bibliography ever produced, based on the works of R.B. Freeman, and the largest catalogue of manuscripts (with over 30,000 entries) ever published. More than 150 supplementary documents are also provided, from secondary reference works to contemporary reviews, obituaries, published descriptions of Darwin's Beagle specimens and important related works for studying and understanding Darwin and his work. Each work containing illustrations or maps is provided with an overview page of thumbnail images allowing readers to see in seconds all the illustrations which are scattered throughout hundreds of pages. The thumbnails take readers directly to larger versions of the image in its context within the original work. Most of the materials provided are appearing online for the first time such as the first edition of A new website offering easy and free access to Charles Darwin's massive output of work is proving a huge hit with readers. Nigel Williams reports. There are also many newly transcribed and never before published manuscripts such as Darwin's Beagle field notebooks. One of these, the notebook in which Darwin recorded his immediate thoughts on the Galapagos, was stolen in the early 1980s, but the text has been transcribed from a microfilm record, although the original has still not been found. Although the collection is already vast, much more will be added before the celebrations of 2009, which is the bicentenary of Darwin's birth and 150 th anniversary of the first publication of the Origin of Species. Dr. van Wyhe says that reader response to the new website has already been overwhelming from people worldwide. " Many readers have written to express their reactions " , he says. In sight: The creators of the new website …