• http://darwin-online.org.uk

From October 19th, anyone with an internet connection can now browse the entire body of work of Charles Darwin.

The web site was the idea of a science historian, John van Wyhe, from the University of Cambridge, UK, who realized that the works of Darwin that were already on the web were scattered across different web sites with no obvious editorial standards. Many institutions and individuals have contributed to the project, which started in 2002. So far, over 50,000 searchable text pages and 40,000 images have been uploaded, making the web site the most comprehensive bibliography of Darwin's work ever published.

The repository contains all of Darwin's books, publications and manuscripts, as well as 'ancillary works' — a collection of reviews describing the naturalist's work. The web site also contains unpublished material, such as the notes that Darwin took on the ship the Beagle during his famous journey around the globe.

Alongside the fully searchable electronic text one can view original documents, including invaluable drawings. There are also links to freely accessible audio files and translations in several languages. By 2009, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, the web site aims to host everything he wrote apart from his private letters, which are being collected on the web by the Darwin Correspondence Project.

And if a project in Wales goes according to plan, the Beagle will not only 'sail on the web', but on the ocean waves. The Beagle Project Pembrokeshire, which was founded by David Lort-Phillips (a descendant of one of the crew members of the Beagle), aims to build a replica of the ship, blending old-fashioned and modern technologies, to retrace its famous journey with a crew of scientists and students.