National Academies: all PDF books free to download. Also, Darwin's Notes & Comments. made available.

The National Academies - National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council - have been offering, since 1994, "free downloads of most of our titles and of all titles to readers in the developing world."

But effective June 2, they started offering, free of charge to all Web visitors, "PDFs of reports that are currently for sale on the National Academies Press (NAP) Website and PDFs associated with future reports*.

' NAP produces more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the best-informed views on important issues.

  We invite you to visit the NAP homepage [www.nap.edu] and experience the new opportunities available to access our publications.  There you can sign up for MyNAP, a new way for us to deliver all of our content for free to loyal subscribers like you and to reward you with exclusive offers and discounts on our printed books. '

  * There are a small number of reports that never had PDF files and, therefore, those reports are not available for download.  In addition, part of the series, “Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals” are not be [sic] available in PDF and future titles in this series will also not have PDFs associated with them. '

  Despite the "loyal subscribers" wording, their NAP website's wording is this:

' All PDF Books Free to Download
  As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Acadmies Press (NAP) will be downloadable to anyone free of charge.

  That's more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by NAP -- publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. Please share this news with your friends. '

That's impressive.  The International Business Times's Business and Books column by Edward B. Colby points out that only 65% of the PDFs were available for free overall, earlier, but with the few exceptions mentioned above, all PDFs in their catalog will now be downloadable at no cost although printed books will still be sold.  They say that The NAP expects the change to increase its PDF downloads from about 700,000 per year to more than 3 million by 2013.


DARWIN'S NOTES
Here's the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American History of Natural History, which is "a historical and textual edition of Charles Darwin's scientific manuscripts, designed from its inception as an online project.  The database at its core—DARBASE—catalogues some 45,000 Darwin scientific manuscripts.

  These are currently represented by 15,125 high resolution digital images.  Thus far 7,428 manuscript pages have been transcribed to exacting standards and all are presented in easy to read format."
They'll be constantly adding new material to it.

Cambridge University Library announced June 23:

' Notes and comments scribbled by Charles Darwin on the pages and margins of his own personal library have been made available online for the first time.

Darwin’s personal scientific library, the majority of which is held at Cambridge University Library, has been digitised in a collaborative effort involving Cambridge, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History (see below), and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. '

  730 of the 1,480 books in Darwin's personal scientific library "contain abundant notes in the their margins" and are being digitalized."

  The first phase is completed, "with 330 of the most heavily annotated books launched online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library for all to read.
...
  "Although the majority of the books are scientific, some are humanities texts on subjects that Darwin transformed into scientific topics.

  "The series of transcriptions accompanying each page allows everyone to see which passages Darwin found relevant to his work, stimulated his thinking, or just annoyed him as he read the work of others."
...
  "...the information is fully indexed so that people can search for topics and ideas relevant to their interests or work."

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