Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics

Codebreakers: makers of modern genetics, the Wellcome Library's new digital resource which contains over a million pages of books and archives relating to the history of genetics, has now been officially launched. 

A further half million pages will be added over the coming weeks from the holdings of the Wellcome Library and partner institutions at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library, King’s College London, University College London, Glasgow University Archives and the Churchill Archives Centre. 

Codebreakers contains twenty archives including the papers of Francis Crick, James Watson, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, as well as archives of the Eugenics Society, made available by kind permission of the Council of the Galton Institute, the papers of J B S Haldane, and the collections of Guido Pontecorvo and his students Malcolm Ferguson-Smith and James Renwick at Glasgow University. 

Codebreakers also contains over a thousand digitised books covering the science, history and social and cultural aspects of genetics and related disciplines, mostly from the 20th century.

You can find out more about Codebreakers and the collections that have been digitised on the Wellcome Library website http://wellcomelibrary.org

 

World’s largest natural audio and video archive now fully digital and fully online

Check out this blog post by Cornell University on the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Laboratory for Ornithology http://cornelluniversity.tumblr.com/post/40770771576/worlds-largest-natural-sound-archive-now-fully-digital 

Find out how scientists worldwide use the videos and sounds in the archive to support their research. According to this blog post there are nearly 150,000 digital audio recordings dating back to 1929, with about 9,000 species represented. There’s an emphasis on birds, but the collection also includes sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates and more. See the Macaulay Library website and listen to and view recordings and videos at http://macaulaylibrary.org/

Extensive collection of specimens and Alfred Russel Wallace papers appear together for first time in online project

You may be interested to read this Guardian piece on Wallace Online, a web project directed by John van Wyhe, the historian behind Darwin Online. You can find the article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/27/recognition-alfred-russel-wallace-darwin.

Wallace's work on the theory of evolution through natural selection, along with major insights into biodiversity, are described in thousands of pages of books, articles, drawings and paintings, which have now been made available via Wallace Online http://wallace-online.org/.

Wellcome Trust joins 'academic spring' to open up science - Guardian article

This interesting article from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/apr/09/wellcome-trust-academic-spring?INTCMP=SRCH discusses how the Wellcome Trust is supporting the growing 'academic spring' campaign to allow all research papers to be shared online.

Nearly 9,000 researchers have now apparently signed up to boycott journals that restrict access to research papers (i.e. those published by Elsevier). The Wellcome Trust itself is about to launch a "'high calibre scientific journal called eLife that would compete directly with top-tier publications such as Nature and Science".

These are interesting times in the world of academic publishing. There will inevitably be consequences for academic libraries across the world. British universities currently spend £200m a year on journal subscriptions, which represents around 10% of the block grants that they receive from government, as outlined in this article.

Charles Darwin on Land and at Sea - online exhibition

The Charles Darwin exhibition at Christ's College is now available online at: http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darwin2009/

It is based on their 2009 exhibition and celebrates the achievements of one of the most brilliant and influential scientific thinkers in history, and includes a section on his time at Christ's.

Job opportunity for a scientific researcher at UK PubMed Central / the British Library

Engagement Manager - UK Pubmed Central

UKPMC needs an experienced biomedical researcher who will lead on engagement to raise awareness of UKPMC and communicate its benefits.

For more information and to apply visit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ACX383/engagement-manager/

This post has been advertised on jobs.ac.uk and researchresearch.com.

Leading research organisations announce top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust have announced that they will be supporting a new top-tier, open access journal for biomedical and life sciences research.

For more information, see the Wellcome Trust's 'News and features' page on their website at: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/index.htm

Darwin's personal library put online

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.

See the News item on Cambridge University Library's website here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/index.php?c=1#news274