Charles Darwin's complete collection of works is now available online for free, writes Daniel Griffin. Digitised and run by Cambridge University; Darwin Online is sponsored by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and The Charles Darwin Trust. The resource is intended for an academic audience but it is available to anyone with an interest in Darwin or his famous theory of evolution.

Currently there are 50,000 searchable pages of text and an additional 40,000 high resolution images with more content to be added regularly until 2009. The collection can be viewed as a plain text transcript, or the original image text as a scan. There is also an impressive array of digitised images of the illustrations that are associated to his works. Cambridge University has also created MP3 audio files of the transcripts.

Highlights from the new online collection include first editions of Journal of Researchers, The Descent of Man and The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. There are also never before published manuscripts including Darwin’s field notebooks.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, Dr John van Wyhe, Project Director explained why the work was undertaken “The idea is to make these important works as accessible as possible; some people can only get at Darwin that way.”

http://darwin-online.org.uk