1. Digitising Darwin’s Library Jane Smith, Natural History Museum Grant Young, Cambridge University Library Presentation for JISC Programme Meeting, October 2009
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Darwin: “If this were true adios theory” ! Lyell: “The entire variation from the original type... may usually be effected in a brief period of time, after which no further deviation can be obtained by continuing to alter the circumstances, though ever so gradually; indefinite divergence, either in the way of improvement or deterioration, being prevented..." Context is significant
Illustration shows some of the books Darwin carried with him on the Beagle voyage Thank you to Grant for his work on this presentation and he is sorry he cannot be here today.
One of the key sources of ‘data’ for Darwin was his library, which he heavily annotated. Out of a library of 1400 volumes, 700 have significant annotations. Apart from a handful of exceptions, all the annotated books are held at Cambridge University Library, with the remainder at Down House His annotations were transcribed and published in print in the late eighties, but their full utility requires access to the books they annotate – and some of the books on Darwin’s shelves were quite obscure It would be very costly to digitise every page of every book in Darwin’s library
One of the key sources of ‘data’ for Darwin was his library, which he heavily annotated. Out of a library of 1400 volumes, 700 have significant annotations. Apart from a handful of exceptions, all the annotated books are held at Cambridge University Library, with the remainder at Down House His annotations were transcribed and published in print in the late eighties, but their full utility requires access to the books they annotate – and some of the books on Darwin’s shelves were quite obscure It would be very costly to digitise every page of every book in Darwin’s library
We propose to link the transcriptions with digitised versions of books We will fully digitise the most heavily annotated original books; and just target the annotations in lightly annotated books and link in with digital surrogates Storage and delivery will be provided by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which will ensure wide resource discovery and provide good sustainability Via BHL also linked to other iniatiitives including Europeana Challenges such as IPR/Copyright, long term sustainability etc already being address by BHl, Europeana etc and so benefits from linking Darwin Library Project to those
BHL, original group US and UK institutions, Natural History focus to collections and research. Part of larger initiative Encyclopedia of Life From may 2009 BHL Europe – scanning activity in each EU country funded nationally. BHL_E funding from EU 3.5 Million Euro, to fund technical infrastructure – long term sustainability, interoperability, standards, etc Darwin Library fits into overarching goals of BHL
This illustrates an annotated page from one of Darwin’s books (Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, 5th edition, 1837). Darwin’s comment was “if this were true adios theory’! Obviously useful to know the context of such a comment
This illustrated the other significant context. The collection will be placed within the BHL – here’s a mock-up of how it might look, but the technical details are still being worked through.
We’re still working on the numbers, but we should be able to do 300-400 books within this project. We will fundraise to do the remainder The project will also seek to extend beyond Darwin’s Library to Darwin’s Reading, but including (where available) copies of books he read and made notes about.
![The background ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)