Charles Darwin's Manuscripts and Publications on the World Wide Web

Abstract

This paper describes three Internet resources that publish manuscripts and published works by Charles Darwin. The authority, content, and design of each is outlined, and each site is assessed according to how effectively its design and organization of the material promotes exploration of Darwin's works and ideas. The presentations of the materials are compared with the traditional presentation of text materials in books. It is concluded that, while these three sites offer a large amount of important work by Darwin, access to it is sharply limited because, particularly in the case of two of the sites, the material is not presented in a structured manner that might direct users to particular ideas or texts, especially if those ideas or texts are not well-known to the user.