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Monday, June 30, 2008

LII and Darwin

When I'm looking for something on the internet, I often start with the Librarians' Internet Index. Their slogan is "Websites you can trust," and in my experience that's proven true. One reason they're so trustworthy is that the project is publicly funded, with minimal ad support (you may not even notice the ads), and under the general management of the Califa Library Group here in California.

Not everything is in the LII--that's the point. Every site that's been selected has been evaluated and reviewed by a librarian, and they're very open about the selection criteria for including sites in the project. So you may not find anything related to your topic there, but if you do, you can read the librarian's signed review about the site(s), and know that you will find reliable information--part of a librarian's training is in evaluating the quality and reliability of sources, and when you access LII, you're taking advantage of their expertise--for free. And when I don't find something in LII, it reminds me to be on the alert--to remember to view information on the internet with a critical eye towards the reliability of the sources.

Besides being able to search LII or browse by topic, you can also subscribe to their weekly newsletter of new sites by email or rss. That's how I heard about The Linnean Society's site celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and related events, such as the 150th anniversary on the 1st of July of the reading of the paper from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace outlining, for the first time, the theory of evolution by natural selection. It links to information on the anniversary events, such as the fantastic Darwin 200 site, as well as to related scholarship by Alfred Russel Wallace.

3 comments:

Michael D. Barton, FCD said...

Other Darwin sites all should be aware of:

Darwin Correspondence Project:
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/

The HMS Beagle Project:
http://www.thebeagleproject.com/
Blog: http://thebeagleproject.blogspot.com/

The Friends of Charles Darwin:
http://darwin.gruts.com/
Blog: http://darwin.gruts.com/weblog/

And on Wallace:

The Alfred Russel Wallace Page:
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm

The Alfred Russel Wallace Memorial Fund:
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm

How about Thomas Henry Huxley:
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/

And Joseph Dalton Hooker:
http://www.jdhooker.org.uk/

Okay, I'm done.

Heather said...

Thanks for contributing the fantastic sites, Michael!

Michael D. Barton, FCD said...

Absolutely! And of course, there's my blog:
http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/