Since 2005, selected historical books have been made available electronically in a programme for the digitisation of cultural works at the University of Strasbourg (Université de Strasbourg). The resulting library draws from a number of disciplines, including medical and cosmological works as well as herbal books from the 16th and 17th centuries. The number of biological titles is just under 300 (as of end 2009). Digitised items can be accessed by users in a viewer, but cannot be downloaded. It is possible to order on CD-ROM, at a cost. ... [Editorial staff vifabio]
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library provides quick access to the digital versions of particular rare, exceptional or heavily-used works from its historical collection with “Monographien Digital”. In general, all components of a work are digitised, from the book cover to individual pages and contents. Although the majority of the HAAB’s digitised collections are more relevant to the humanities, there are still many biological works available. Currently, the biological component can only be filtered out indirectly; the Internet Guide contains a link to a list of titles that contain the partial keywords “botan”, “plant” and “zool”. ... [Information of the supplier, translated and modified]
In the West, as a result of the explorations of every corner of the globe undertaken from the latter half of the 18th century, organisms, unknown until then, and novel specimens were brought in, and an enormous amount of information was collected. All this was collated by figures such as Buffon, the author of "Natural History, general and specific", and Linnaeus, who founded the "binomial nomenclature", which is the basis of the formal naming system used today. These works became known even among ordinary citizens of the day and also led to an extraordinary boom in the field. Here you can see the "Pinax Theatri Botanici," a general survey of plants by Gaspard Bauhin who distinguished genuses and species before Linnaeus; the "Elements de botanique ou methode pour connaitre les plantes" of Tournefort, whose use of many illustrations made it possible even for beginners to distinguish between and to classify plants; and the "Flora Japonica" and "Fauna Japonica" of Siebold who studied Japanese flora and fauna using tens of thousands of specimens. In the future it is planned to make a collection of representative items from available the natural history materials in the possession of the Kyoto University, including celebrated works of people such as Linnaeus, Buffon, and Youan Udagawa and Keisuke Ito, who introduced the Western study of natural history to Japan. ... [Information of the supplier]
