The Sketchbook Project Presents Online 24,000 Sketchbooks, Created by Artists from 135 Countries

in Archives, Art, Life | June 12th, 2015

sketchbook2

Artist: Helen Sander­son

If you love some­thing give it away.

If it doesn’t come back to you, it was nev­er real­ly yours…

Or, it’s a labor of love you cre­at­ed under the aus­pices of the Brook­lyn Art Library, with the full knowl­edge that giv­ing it away is a cost of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Every year, thou­sands of artists, from the expe­ri­enced to the fledg­ling, pay a nom­i­nal fee to fill a 5x7 sketch­book with a cus­tom bar­code. Upon com­ple­tion, the books are to be mailed back to the one room Art Library, to become part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion, cur­rent­ly over 34,000 vol­umes strong (24,000 of which appear online). Vis­i­tors receive free library cards that allow them to view as many vol­umes as they like in-house, three at a time.

Artists will­ing to cough up a slight­ly more sub­stan­tial fee can have their book dig­i­tized for online view­ing at The Sketch­book Project.

sketchbook3

Artist: Tim Oliveira

In their vir­gin state, the sketch­books are uni­form. From there, any­thing goes, pro­vid­ed they retain their orig­i­nal height and width, and swell to no more than an inch thick. (Messy, gooey books might face rejec­tion, in part because they threat­en to con­t­a­m­i­nate the herd.)

Dip in at ran­dom and you will find an aston­ish­ing array of fin­ished work: messy, metic­u­lous, inti­mate, inscrutable, self-mock­ing, sin­cere, abstract, nar­ra­tive, care­ful­ly plot­ted, utter­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al, accom­plished, ama­teur — ren­dered in a wide vari­ety of media, includ­ing ball point pen and col­lage.

sketchbook4

Artist: Estel­la Yu

My favorite way to browse the col­lec­tion, whether in per­son or online, is by select­ing a theme, just as the artists do when sign­ing up for the annu­al project. 2016’s themes include  “sand­wich,” “great hopes and mas­sive fail­ures,” and “Ahhh! Mon­ster!”

(“I’ll choose my own theme” is a peren­ni­al menu offer­ing.)

The theme that guid­ed the artists whose work is pub­lished here­in is “Things Found on Restau­rant Nap­kins.” Would you have guessed?

sketcbhook5

Artist: Christo­pher Mof­fitt

You can also search on spe­cif­ic words or medi­ums, artists’ names, and geo­graph­ic loca­tions. To date, The Sketch­book Project has received sketch­books by cre­ative peo­ple from 135+ coun­tries.

Those ready to take the Brook­lyn Art Library’s Sketch­book Project plunge can enlist here. Don’t fret about your qualifications—co-founders Steven Peter­man and Shane Zuck­er have made things demo­c­ra­t­ic, which is to say uncu­rat­ed, by design.

sketchbook6

Artist: Bet­ty Esper­an­za

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 422 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her 2011 sketch­book, “I’m a Scav­enger” is housed in the Brook­lyn Art Library. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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NASA Puts Online a Big Collection of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Download and Use

in Archives, Science | January 26th, 2015


When we envi­sion the fruits of the research of the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (aka NASA), we tend to think of images. I think I exag­ger­ate not at all when I say that the nev­er-before-seen view of the Earth from space gave human­i­ty a whole new per­spec­tive, no pun intend­ed, on our very exis­tence. But you don’t have to strain too hard to think of his­tor­i­cal­ly momen­tous NASA sounds, either: “Hous­ton we’ve had a prob­lem,” “One giant leap for mankind.”

If you can’t think of more than those two, why not spend some lis­ten­ing time with NASA’s new Sound­cloud account, or alter­na­tive­ly perus­ing the NASA Sounds web site, which fea­tures a larg­er num­ber of down­load­able mp3s. “There are rock­et sounds, the chirps of satel­lites and equip­ment, light­ning on Jupiter, inter­stel­lar plas­ma and radio emis­sions,” writes Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Music’s Peter Kirn. “And in one nod to human­i­ty, and not just Amer­i­can human­i­ty, there’s the Sovi­et satel­lite Sput­nik (among many projects that are inter­na­tion­al in nature).” Bet­ter still, “you’re free to use all of these sounds as you wish, because NASA’s own audio isn’t copy­right­ed.”

We’ve includ­ed here three of NASA’s Sound­cloud playlists: space shut­tle mis­sion sounds, solar sys­tem and beyond sounds, and Pres­i­dent Kennedy sounds. When you’ve lis­tened through all NASA them­selves have uploaded, you can find more sound clips of out­er-space inter­est in NASA’s liked sounds, a col­lec­tion of the ambi­ent sounds of space explo­ration that include those of a space suit­’s inter­nal pump, a Japan­ese exper­i­ment mod­ule, and, of course, a space toi­let — a con­stant son­ic com­pan­ion on any trip to the final fron­tier.

Please note that you can down­load the Sound­cloud files by fol­low­ing these instruc­tions. From the NASA Sounds web page, you can down­load files by right click­ing on them and then sav­ing them to your hard dri­ve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Whitney Museum Puts Online 21,000 Works of American Art, By 3,000 Artists

in Archives, Art | January 22nd, 2015

soir bleu

Soir Bleu by Edward Hop­per, 1914.

The trend has now become delight­ful­ly clear: the world’s best-known art insti­tu­tions have got around to the impor­tant busi­ness of mak­ing their col­lec­tions freely view­able online. We’ve already fea­tured the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Rijksmu­se­um, and the Nation­al Gallery (as well as new, inter­net-based insti­tu­tions such as the Google Art Project and Art.sy). Today, we bring news that the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art has joined in as well.

the steerage

The Steer­age by Alfred Stieglitz, 1907.

“Last week, the Whit­ney Muse­um mas­sive­ly over­hauled its online data­base,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Bec­ca Roth­feld. “The muse­um of Amer­i­can art expand­ed its online col­lec­tion from a pal­try 700 works to around 21,000. The dig­i­tal reserve now includes over 3,000 pieces by Edward Hop­per, in addi­tion to offer­ings from a wide swathe of art from the Unit­ed States, includ­ing the likes of Mike Kel­ley and Mar­tin Wong.” Roth­feld also notes that all this dig­i­ti­za­tion has hap­pened dur­ing the muse­um’s phys­i­cal move, cur­rent­ly under­way, to a build­ing in the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict with 63,000 com­bined square feet of indoor and out­door gallery space.

morning sky

Morn­ing Sky by Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, 1916.

We non-New York­ers have, of course, already booked our flights to expe­ri­ence the Whit­ney’s new digs. But since the build­ing won’t actu­al­ly open to the pub­lic until May, all of us, no mat­ter where we live, will have to con­tent our­selves for the moment with what the muse­um has put online so far. For­tu­nate­ly, it has put a lot online: you can browse their dig­i­tal col­lec­tions by artist here; you’ll notice a great deal of Jack­son Pol­lock, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, Edward Hop­per, and Andy Warhol already avail­able for your brows­ing plea­sure.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

The Get­ty Puts 4600 Art Images Into the Pub­lic Domain (and There’s More to Come)

40,000 Art­works from 250 Muse­ums, Now View­able for Free at the Redesigned Google Art Project

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Tate Digitizes 70,000 Works of Art: Photos, Sketchbooks, Letters & More

in Archives, Art | December 22nd, 2014

Photograph of Nigel Henderson by Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Pho­to­graph of Nigel Hen­der­son via Nigel Hen­der­son Estate

If you’re like me, one of the first items on your itin­er­ary when you hit a new city is the art muse­ums. Of course one, two, even three or four vis­its to the world’s major col­lec­tions can’t begin to exhaust the wealth of paint­ing, sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, and more con­tained with­in. Rotat­ing and spe­cial exhibits make tak­ing it all in even less fea­si­ble. That’s why we’re so grate­ful for the dig­i­tal archives that insti­tu­tions like the Get­ty, LA Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Nation­al Gallery, and the British Library make avail­able free online. Now anoth­er muse­um, Britain’s Tate Mod­ern, gets into the dig­i­tal archive are­na with around 70,000 dig­i­tized works of art in their online gallery.

Sketch of the bus stop

“Sketch of the bus stop” from the estate of Josef Her­man

But wait, there’s more. Much more. A sep­a­rate dig­i­tal archive—the Tate’s Archives & Access project—offers up a trove of mate­ri­als you’re unlike­ly to encounter much, if at all, in their phys­i­cal spaces. That’s because this col­lec­tion dig­i­tizes lit­tle-seen “artists’ mate­ri­als, includ­ing pho­tographs, sketch­books, diaries, let­ters and objects, doc­u­ment­ing the lives and work­ing process­es of British born and émi­gré artists, from 1900 to the present.” These include, writes The Guardian, “the love let­ters of painter Paul Nash, the detailed sculp­ture records of Bar­bra Hep­worth, and 3,000 pho­tographs by Nigel Hen­der­son, pro­vid­ing a behind-the-scenes back­stage look at London’s 1950s jazz scene.” Thus far, the Tate has uploaded about 6,000 items, “includ­ing 52 col­lec­tions relat­ing to 79 artists.” At the Tate archive, you’ll find pho­tographs like that of painter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nigel Hen­der­son (see top of the post) and also paint­ings by the high­ly regard­ed Pol­ish-British real­ist, Josef Her­man (right above).

Squared-up drawings of soldiers 1920-1921 by David Jones 1895-1974

“Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers” via The estate of David Jones

You’ll find pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es like the 1920–21 Squared-up draw­ings of sol­diers by painter and poet David Jones, above, one of 109 sketch­es and two sketch­books avail­able by the same artist. You’ll find let­ters like that below, writ­ten by sculp­tor Ken­neth Armitage to his wife Joan Moore in 1951—one of hun­dreds. These are but the tini­est sam­pling of what is now “but a drop in the ocean,” The Guardian writes, “giv­en the more than 1 mil­lion items in the [phys­i­cal] archive.” Archive head Adri­an Glew calls the col­lec­tion “a nation­al archival trea­sure” that is also “for the enrich­ment of the whole world.”

Letter from Kenneth Armitage to Joan Moore [1951] by Kenneth Armitage 1916-2002

Let­ter from Ken­neth Armitage to Joan Moore via the The Ken­neth Armitage Foun­da­tion

The remain­der of the dig­i­tized Archives & Access collection—52, 000 items in total—should be avail­able by the sum­mer of 2015. While view­ing art and arti­facts online is cer­tain­ly no sub­sti­tute for see­ing them in per­son, it’s bet­ter than nev­er see­ing them at all. In any case, mil­lions of pieces are only view­able by cura­tors and spe­cial­ists and nev­er make their way to gallery floors. But with the appear­ance and expan­sion of free online archives like the Tate’s, that sit­u­a­tion will shift dra­mat­i­cal­ly, open­ing up nation­al trea­sures to inde­pen­dent schol­ars and ordi­nary art lovers the world over.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Puts 400,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

LA Coun­ty Muse­um Makes 20,000 Artis­tic Images Avail­able for Free Down­load

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Digital Einstein: Princeton Web Site Puts 1000s of Einstein’s Papers Online

in Archives, Physics | December 8th, 2014

digital einstein

Last Fri­day saw the launch of The Dig­i­tal Ein­stein Papers. Host­ed by Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press, the web site gives web users free, online access to the The Col­lect­ed Papers of Albert Ein­stein.

To date, 13 vol­umes of Ein­stein’s writ­ing (or 7,000 pages from 2,900 doc­u­ments) have been pub­lished, and they all now appear in elec­tron­ic for­mat on the Dig­i­tal Ein­stein site. Even­tu­al­ly, a total of 30,000 doc­u­ments will get uploaded to the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion.

The ini­tial trove fea­tures, says Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press, “the writ­ings and cor­re­spon­dence of Albert Ein­stein (1879–1955) from his youth [through] 1923.” And it includes things like: Einstein’s love let­ters, the note­book in which he worked out the gen­er­al the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty, and this gem of a let­ter (found by Vox) where Ein­stein coun­seled Marie Curie on how to deal with the trolls of last cen­tu­ry.

einstein curie trolls

The texts are all pre­sent­ed in the orig­i­nal lan­guage in which they were writ­ten. Many have in-depth Eng­lish lan­guage anno­ta­tions, and gen­er­al­ly read­ers can tog­gle to an Eng­lish lan­guage trans­la­tion of the doc­u­ments.

As we not­ed in 2012, a sep­a­rate online archive of Ein­stein’s papers lives on a web site host­ed by the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem. Cours­es on Ein­stein can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, and impor­tant texts by Ein­stein can be down­loaded from our Free eBooks col­lec­tion.

via NYTimes/Vox

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

64 Free Online Physics Cours­es

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

Albert Ein­stein Reads ‘The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence’ (1941)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds.

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Jazz on the Tube: An Archive of 2,000 Classic Jazz Videos (and Much More)

in Archives, Jazz, Music | December 8th, 2014

What is the cur­rent state of jazz, you ask? You might ask genre-bend­ing musician/producer/rapper Stephen Elli­son, aka Fly­ing Lotus, who also hap­pens to be the nephew of John and Alice Coltrane. In a recent inter­view, Elli­son lament­ed “it’s all gone quite stale over the past 20 years” and imag­ined that if Miles Davis “came back to Earth and heard a lot of these jazz cats, he’d be mad. He’d lit­er­al­ly be mad, and he’d just go back to where he was dead at.” Giv­en Miles’ infa­mous tem­per and dis­dain for the con­ven­tion­al, this isn’t hard to imag­ine at all. But whether you could call today’s jazz “ele­va­tor music” is a point I leave to oth­ers to debate.

Ah, but what is the state of dig­i­tal jazz preser­va­tion? Now, that is a ques­tion I can answer, at least in some small part, by point­ing you toward Jazz on the Tube. This online resource bills itself as three won­der­ful things in one: “a search­able data­base of thou­sands of care­ful­ly hand picked and anno­tat­ed jazz videos”; “free Video-of-the-Day ser­vice”; and “up-to-date direc­to­ry of jazz clubs, jazz fes­ti­vals, and jazz orga­ni­za­tions world-wide.” You’ll also find there pod­casts and world­wide list­ings of jazz radio sta­tions. But as its title implies, its most ful­some ser­vice offers a list of 2,000 videos from an A‑Z of sev­er­al hun­dred artists—Abbey Lin­coln to Zoot Sims.

Fan­cy some of that nev­er-com­pla­cent Miles Davis mag­ic? Check him out at the top doing “Sanctuary/Spanish Key” in 1970 at the Fill­more (open­ing for Santana—he also opened for Neil Young and the Grate­ful Dead that year). Dig some clas­sic hard bop? Check out the Thelo­nious Monk Quar­tet in Poland, 1966. Like that N’Orleans’ sound? Do not miss Bunk John­son below.

Whether it’s the avant-funk jazz stylings of con­tem­po­rary trio Medes­ki, Mar­tin & Wood or the trad big band swing of Cab Cal­loway you seek, at Jazz on the Tube, you will most sure­ly find them. The breadth of artists, styles, and peri­ods rep­re­sent­ed demon­strates the incred­i­ble range and adapt­abil­i­ty of jazz. If it’s tru­ly gone stale these days, I think we may antic­i­pate that jazz will even­tu­al­ly find new forms its wor­thy ances­tors approve of.

Per­haps you will fall in love with Jazz on the Tube. Per­haps you may find that it’s exact­ly what you need. If so, you should know that they also need you. Although their impres­sive archive of con­tent is “all free to you,” it is not free for them to pro­duce and main­tain. They are cur­rent­ly ask­ing help in the form of month­ly mem­ber­ships or one-time dona­tions. Giv­en the amount of cura­to­r­i­al work they’ve put into this dig­i­tal jazz data­base, and how much enjoy­ment it’s like­ly to bring you, it seems only fair to give back to what they proud­ly describe as a “labor of love.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Great­est Jazz Films Ever Fea­tures Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Bil­lie & More

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Science Journal Nature Will Make Its Archives Free to View Online (Kind of), Dating Back to 1869

in Archives, Magazines | December 3rd, 2014

A quick note: Nature announced yes­ter­day that it will make all of its arti­cles free to view, read, and anno­tate online. That applies to the his­toric sci­ence jour­nal (launched in 1869) and to 48 oth­er sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals in Macmillan’s Nature Pub­lish­ing Group (NPG). Oth­er titles include Nature Genet­ics, Nature Med­i­cine and Nature Physics.

But there are a whole lot of caveats. The press release reads:

All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a pro­pri­etary screen-view for­mat that can be anno­tat­ed but not copied, print­ed or down­loaded… The con­tent-shar­ing pol­i­cy … marks an attempt to let sci­en­tists freely read and share arti­cles while pre­serv­ing NPG’s pri­ma­ry source of income — the sub­scrip­tion fees libraries and indi­vid­u­als pay to gain access to arti­cles.

But wait, there are a few more caveats. The archives will be made avail­able to sub­scribers (e.g., researchers at uni­ver­si­ties) as well as 100 media out­lets and blogs, and they can then share the arti­cles (as read-only PDFs) with the rest of the world.  This is all part of a one-year exper­i­ment.

To learn more about this ini­tia­tive, read the press release here.

Not the purest form of Open Cul­ture, I know, but it’s hope­ful­ly worth the quick men­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing Ergo, the New Open Phi­los­o­phy Jour­nal

Read 700 Free eBooks Made Avail­able by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

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16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writing on Evolution Now Digitized and Available Online

in Archives, Biology, History, Science | November 30th, 2014

Darwin Tree of Life

The Dar­win­ian the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion is an amaz­ing sci­en­tif­ic idea that seems, at least to a layper­son like me, to meet all the cri­te­ria for what sci­en­tists like Ian Glynn praise high­ly as “elegance”—all of them per­haps except one: Sim­plic­i­ty. Evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry may seem on its face to be a fair­ly sim­ple expla­na­tion of the facts—all life begins as sin­gle-celled organ­isms, then changes and adapts in response to its envi­ron­ment, branch­ing and devel­op­ing into mil­lions of species over bil­lions of years. But the jour­ney Dar­win took to arrive at this idea was hard­ly straight­for­ward and it cer­tain­ly didn’t arrive in one eure­ka moment of enlight­en­ment.

darwin Notebook D

The process for him took over two decades, rep­re­sent­ed by the hun­dreds of pages of notes he left behind, all of which will be freely avail­able online at the Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry in 2015. This means 30,000 dig­i­tized doc­u­ments, like the naturalist’s first “Tree of Life” at the top of the page, from a July 1837 note­book entry, and Trans­mu­ta­tion Note­book D above, the first note­book in which Dar­win began work­ing on the the­o­ry of nat­ur­al selec­tion.

The Muse­um has cur­rent­ly announced that it is a lit­tle over the halfway point, with just over 16,000 dig­i­tized doc­u­ments that cov­er, they write, “the 25-year peri­od in which Dar­win became con­vinced of evo­lu­tion; dis­cov­ered nat­ur­al selec­tion; devel­oped expla­na­tions of adap­ta­tion, spe­ci­a­tion, and a branch­ing tree of life and wrote the Ori­gin [of Species].” Direc­tor of the project David Kohn describes that lat­ter famous work as “the mature fruit of a pro­longed process of sci­en­tif­ic explo­ration and cre­ativ­i­ty that began toward the end of his Bea­gle voy­age… and that con­tin­ued to expand in range and deep­en in con­cep­tu­al rig­or through numer­ous well-marked stages.”

mdb56

Now his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence can trace those stages as though they were a fos­sil record, start­ing with that famous H.M.S. Bea­gle voy­age, in which the young Dar­win sailed from South Amer­i­ca to the Pacif­ic Islands—stopping at numer­ous sites, includ­ing the Gala­pa­gos Islands of course, and col­lect­ing sam­ples and mak­ing obser­va­tions. The jour­ney pro­duced a live­ly account, 1839’s Voy­age of the Bea­gle, pre­lude to the ful­ly devel­oped the­o­ry pre­sent­ed 20 years lat­er in On the Ori­gin of Species. Look­ing into the Bea­gle voy­age sec­tion, you’ll find hun­dreds of pages of notes, like that above on Gala­pa­gos mock­ing­birds. Darwin’s hand­writ­ing will present a chal­lenge, which is why, Hyper­al­ler­gic tells us, the project is “adding tran­scrip­tions and a schol­ar­ly struc­ture to its high-res­o­lu­tion images.”

darwin Children's drawing

Hyper­al­ler­gic also sums up the remain­ing con­tents of the huge archive, which in addi­tion to the Bea­gle mate­r­i­al will fea­ture every­thing “from the rest of his life, which he spent defend­ing his work.” This means “scrib­blings in books he stud­ied, abstracts, his own book drafts, arti­cles and their revi­sions, jour­nals he read, and his note­books on trans­mu­ta­tion.” You’ll also find “some charm­ing odd­i­ties” like draw­ings by the scientist’s chil­dren (above) on the back of orig­i­nal Ori­gin man­u­script pages. Learn much more about the archive, and Darwin’s life­long work, at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al History’s Dar­win Man­u­script Project site.

via io9/Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Read the Orig­i­nal Let­ters Where Charles Dar­win Worked Out His The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion

Trace Darwin’s Foot­steps with Google’s New Vir­tu­al Tour of the Gala­pa­gos Islands

New Ani­mat­ed Web Series Makes the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion Easy to Under­stand

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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