It has been over a century since the HMS Beagle, carrying a 22-year-old Charles Darwin, sailed around the world for 5 years studying foreign species. Darwin was famous for his work studying finches in the Galapagos and produced one of the most monumental books in the field of biology – The Origin of Species<\/i>. To this day, Darwin\u2019s work remains referenced by the academics and scholars in the field, but how does his work affect the average college student? More broadly, how does the lack of accessibility to Darwin\u2019s work, both physically and intellectually, affect the ordinary student\u2019s understanding of the Darwin\u2019s research?<\/p>\n
This leads to Darwin Online<\/i>, one of the largest and most widely consulted anthologies of Charles Darwin\u2019s publications ever produced. In my experience, Darwin Online<\/i> has removed the barrier to information pertaining to Darwin and made it easier to gain a holistic understanding of the man himself. In layman\u2019s terms, the online anthology has not only quelled my academic pursuits but also contained outside publications about the subject matter. Furthermore, the online collection includes materials that I may not have been privy to otherwise, as the website also contains some of Darwin\u2019s private papers.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Darwin Online<\/i> attempts to allow individuals of all backgrounds equitable access to the information. With all that being said, the online collection has inherent limitations. People need wireless internet and a computer capable of connecting, but in many other ways, it removes the barriers to access. While browsing online, I noticed that the website also has translations for scholars and people to read in their native languages. This allows people to step out of the eurocentric lens<\/i> and removes the language barrier that may have traditionally limited the opportunity to study these materials.<\/p>\n
Darwin Online<\/i> also ensures that the material is fully formatted for modern viewing. The entirety of Darwin\u2019s works, including new discoveries, are constantly being scanned and uploaded to the web in the most widely accessible format. I mean everything. The website itself claims that \u201ceach text is absolutely complete, nothing is omitted (as so often with online texts) including end pages and publishers’ [advertisements].\u201d This unadulterated version of Darwin\u2019s works assists greatly when attempting to write research papers, editorials, and other publications because it removes the influence that another writer might have on the works.<\/p>\n
Conclusively, Darwin Online<\/i> is a tool that removes the inequities form studying the works of Darwin and allows everyone the chance to examine the original manuscripts, papers, and sketches otherwise inaccessible through traditional means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been over a century since the HMS Beagle, carrying a 22-year-old Charles Darwin, sailed around the world for 5 years studying foreign species. Darwin was famous for his work studying finches in the Galapagos and produced one of the most monumental books in the field of biology – The Origin of Species. To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8604,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[402584],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3428,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions\/3428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st235a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}