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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Library of the HMS Beagle

H.M.S Beagle in Straits of Magellan from LibraryThing

A while ago I posted about the library catalog of the ship's and crew's libraries, reconstructed on LibraryThing. Another Legacy Library of note is cataloged there as well, that of the HMS Beagle. From the "About my Library" section of the Library Profile Page:

This library is based on the Darwin Project's Books on the Beagle reconstruction of the library aboard the HMS Beagle complied "from the Beagle correspondence, CD’s diary, field notebooks, and the extensive zoological and geological notes."


The "Books on the Beagle" article includes the regulations for the library in eight short points, the second of which instructs the user to create a temporary cover for the book being used. I learned about making these in elementary school for my school textbooks, and still make them occasionally--it's surprising how much protection just a sheet of paper can give. I'm not sure how they make them in Darwin's day, but this is the technique that I learned.

2 comments:

Buck said...

It's such a wonderful thing that these manuscripts and libraries are coming online. Thanks for each and every post!

Heather said...

The resources becoming available are amazing.

And thanks for the kind words, Buck!