The Biodiversity Heritage Library-Australia is the digital literature component of the Atlas of Living Australia. The Atlas is an ambitious project to build a biodiversity information platform to provide scientists and others with access to information from a wide range of biodiversity data and datasets as well as tools for manipulating, analysing and contributing to that data. Access to literature is particularly important to taxonomic researchers. It does not matter whether the original description of a species was published a year ago or a hundred years ago, the taxonomist must still consult the literature in the process of identifying and naming new species. Prior to digitisation, the library collections housed within each BHL affiliated museum or herbarium library or research institution have existed in isolation, available only to those who can gain physical access. Consequently, the relative isolation of these collections presented an antiquated obstacle to further biodiversity investigation. This problem is particularly acute for the developing countries that are home to the majority of the world’s biodiversity. BHL-Au is also member of Biodiversity Heritage Libraries and affiliated projects around the world. ... [Information of the supplier]
Charles Darwin’s Library is a digital edition and virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Charles Darwin. In 1908, Charles Darwin’s son Francis transferred what he called the ‘Darwin Library’ to the Botany School at Cambridge University under the care and control of the Professor of Botany, A. C. Seward. As Francis put it, "The library of Charles Darwin has now found a permanent home in his University..." Of course the library of Charles Darwin is more than the collection of the works he owned at his death. As Francis already appreciated in 1908, "The chief interest of the Darwin books lies in the pencil notes scribbled on their pages, or written on scraps of paper and pinned to the last page." Darwin did read both systematically and with great intensity. He read to gather evidence, to explore and define the research possibilities of his evolutionary ideas, and to gauge reactions to his own publications. In fact, reading was a major tool in Darwin’s scientific practice. Thus what our digital reconstruction of the Darwin Library delivers is the ability to retrace and reduplicate Darwin’s reading of a wealth of materials. The portion of the Darwin Library now published at the Biodiversity Heritage Library constitutes Phase 1 of a collaborative project to digitise the Darwin Library works and to provide transcriptions of Darwin’s marginalia side by side with the pages he marked. Phase 1 presents images and marginalia for 330 books, represents 22% of the total 1480 Darwin Library book titles. But, more significantly, these 330 titles represent 44% of the 743 Darwin books that bear his annotations or marks. The latter comprise 28951 annotated and marked book pages and 1624 attached note slips. Plans for further phases to complete digital publication of the remainder of the Darwin Library are now under consideration. ... [Information of the supplier]
The encyclopaedic illustrated nature books of the Middle Ages changed in the early modern period, branching out into numerous specialist areas, such as botany, zoology, geology, etc. This process was advanced even further in the 18th Century by academics, such as the Swedish researcher Carl von Linné, who introduced systems for the classification of individual species. The world-wide research into Flora and Fauna benefited enormously from the resulting standardised nomenclature. The identification and naming of types and species achieved levels never seen before. New methods, such as the use of the microscope, allowed research to be carried out in areas where it had previously been impossible. Essential for the distribution of these new discoveries was their timely publication in richly illustrated works. Some of the most important works of this type, not only scientifically but also in terms of their artistic merit, held by the Library of Heidelberg University, are being successively digitalised and made available online. ... [Information of the supplier]
