The British Columbia Digital Library

Digital Library Collections By Subject: Science and Technology

See also Engineering Health and Medicine.

• Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia, PA), Digital Collections. Digital facsimiles of 19th century natural history publications pertaining to the United States are available as Adobe Acrobat PDF images integrated into the academy's online library catalog. The digital collections include 19th century and earlier artwork of flora and fauna from around the world. The academy is also digitizing botanical specimens collected by Lewis and Clark on their expedition across the United States in 1804-1806. Date added: 2002-08-25.
• ACM Digital Library. Part of the  ACM Portal.  New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery. Note: All content is for sale. Due to the importance of this site to the history of digital libraries, it is included here. It is possible free access to the bibliographic database may be eliminated in the future. Date added: 2002-01-10. Date updated: 2002-01-10.
• AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture). Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations, 2003. Summary: " ...an initiative to provide free or low-cost access to major scientific journals in agriculture and related biological, environmental and social sciences to public institutions in developing countries. AGORA is available to students and researchers in qualifying not-for-profit institutions in eligible developing countries." Bibliographic data relating to the journals and article abstracts can be searched by anyone. CABI Pubilishing provides the abstract database (CAB Abstracts AGORA Subset). Date accessed: 2004-03-27. Date added: 2004-03-27.
• Albumen Photographs: History, Science and Preservation (Edited by John Burke and others hosted by Stanford University). Launched on September 23, 2000, site includes a library of full-text, searchable articles and monographs (19th and 20th centuries) in HTML format on albumen photographic technology.
• The Alchemy Web Site. Glasgow, Scotland, UK: Adam McLean. HTML transcriptions of alchemy texts dating back to the 16th century and earlier. Includes many background resources on alchemy. Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Alexander von Humboldt Digital Library. Offenburg, Germany: University of Applied Sciences. " A research project in cooperation with American and German partners." Summary (Text archive > Online text research): " This is a pilot prototype of a multimedia online digital archive on Alexander von Humboldt as a digital network." Date accessed: 2004-09-08. Date added: 2004-09-08.
• Allen Newell Collection (Carnegie Mellon University Libraries). Multimedia archive of this important computer scientist's research career. Selected portions of his research papers are available as digital facsimiles. Allen Newell (1927-1992) was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence and cognitive systems.
• Archimedes Project. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Summary: " The Archimedes Project aims to create a testbed for developing and exploring model interactive environments for the history of mechanics. It will also serve as a proof-of-concept project for open digital libraries on topics in the history of science, and is designed to integrate research and knowledge dissemination in new ways." Includes incunabula (pre-1501 printed works). Alternate URLs: Harvard University Workbench (http://archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/) Max Planck Institute Workbench (http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/arch/archimedes.new.html).  Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education Digital Library. Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education. Alternate title: AACE Digital Library. Summary: " The Digital Library is a valuable online resource of peer-reviewed and published international journal articles and proceedings papers on the latest research, developments, and applications related to all aspects of Educational Technology and E-Learning." A subscription is required to access full-text content which can be searched or browsed, along with viewing abstracts, at no cost. Date accessed: 2004-10-05. Date added: 2004-10-05.
• Bologna Science Classics Online. Bologna, Italy: International Centre for the History of Universities and Science, Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna. Summary: " With the support of the Italian National Research Council (CNR, Cultural Heritage Project), CIS is developing a new series of science classics that will be available full text online.  The series will include texts that have reached a world-wide reputation, and are linked to the practice of science at the University of Bologna over the centuries." Date accessed: 2004-08-28. Date added: 2004-08-28.
• Cefael, Collections de l'Ecole française d'Athènes en ligne (Online Collections of the French School of Athens). Athens, Ecole française d'Athènes, 2003-. Browsable/searchable collection of publications issued by the French School of Athens since the 1870s. The school, founded in 1846,  mainly studies the prehistory and history of Greece, primarily through archaeological data. Date accessed: 2005-10-22. Date added: 2005-10-22.
• California Explores the Ocean. San Diego, CA: University of California, San Diego, Libraries, and San Diego Historical Society. Summary: " ... a collaborative endeavor to make primary source collections available from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, and San Diego Historical Society. Covering several California ocean-related collections, textual, pictorial, and audio resources have been united as a virtual collection to which materials can be added in the future by the initial participants, and, through metadata, by others with significant resources relevant to California oceans and oceanography." Date accessed: 2005-05-23. Date added: 2005-05-23.
• CiteSeer Scientific Literature Digital Library. Princeton, NJ: NEC Laboratories America. Summary: " CiteSeer is a scientific literature digital library that aims to improve the dissemination and feedback of scientific literature .... CiteSeer indexes Postscript and PDF research articles on the Web...." In addition to direct links from the results page, CiteSeer also stores the documents it indexes. Date accessed: 2004-01-15. Date added: 2004-01-15.
• Le Conservatoire numérique des Arts & Métiers. Paris, France: Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. Partially searchable or browsable digital facsimiles (GIF) of works dating between the 16th and 20th centuries. The library is self-contained with its own navgiational tool for reading these publications. Date added: 2002-09-08.
• CORDLink Digital Library (Geological Survey of Canada, Pacific Division BC Geological Survey and UBC Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences). Multimedia collection documenting the geology of the Canadian Cordillera. Includes maps, documents (publications), and images (photographs). The free Autodesk MapGuide Web browser plug-in is required to view the interactive maps. Date updated: 2003-03-20.
• Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. Ithaca, NY: Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University, January 2005-. Summary: " The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is a core electronic collection of agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science,forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. Scholars have selected the titles in this collection for their historical importance. Their evaluations and 4,500 core titles are detailed in the seven volume series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences, Wallace C. Olsen, series editor." Date accessed: 2006 01 15. Date added: 2006-01-15.
• Daguerreian Texts (The Daguerreian Society). A wide selection of 19th and 20th century texts (periodical articles, book extracts, and archival records) in HTML format  about the daguerreotype, the first commercially success photographic process released in 1839. Additional links to other texts about the daguerreotype are found in the Daguerreian Links section. Date added: 2001-12-04.
• Development of Mechanical Knowledge in China. " A joint research project conducted by the Partner Group of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science at the Institute for the History of Natural Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences." As of March 6, 2004, includes digital facsimiles of China monumentis by Athanasius Kircher (1667) Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature) by Song Yingxing (1637) and Yuanxi Qiqi Tushuo Luzui (Collected diagrams and explanations of wonderful machines from the far west) translated and compiled by Johann Terrenz (Schreck) and Wang Zheng (1627). Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• The Digital Daguerreian Archive Project (Gregory Walker). As of December 2001, the project contains two 19th century books about the dagurreotype in ASCII or Rich Text Format (RTF) with GIF illustrations in a ZIP archive, and an article in ASCII about the Autochrome process. Date added: 2001-12-04.
• DoHistory. Harvard University. " A site that shows you how to piece together the past from the fragments that have survived. Our case study: Martha Ballard." Martha Ballard (1735-1812) was an American  midwife and the centerpiece of this site is a digital facsimile and transcription of the diary she kept for 27 years (1785-1812). Supporting documents in the form and archival records and publications are also available for study. Date accessed: 2002-09-17. Date added: 2002-09-17.
• ebrary contains freely viewable books (requires download of ebrary Reader) on computers, science and technology. Date added: 2002-02-10.
• ECHO (European Cultural Heritage Online). Berlin, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and others. Digital facsimiles that document the achievements and diffusion of Western and Eastern civilizations beginning with Sumerian cuneiform tablets (3000 B.C.) as represented in the CDLI and ranging across time  and  topics to the 20th cenutry. Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06. Date updated: 2005-02-27.
• ECHO: Exploring and Collecting History Online: Science and Technology. Fairfax, VA: Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Date accessed: 2002-10-23. Date added: 2002-10-23.
• eConf: Electronic Conference Proceedings Archive (Hosted by Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University, for the U.S. Department of Energy). Proceedings of scientific conferences in high-energy physics and related fields.
• Einstein Archives Online. " A joint project of the Albert Einstein Archives and the David and Fela Shapell Digitization Project at the Jewish National and University Library, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, [and] the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena." Full-text resources include over 900 digitized manuscripts (ca. 3,000 high-resolution images). Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Electronic Publications Index. Agassiz and Summerland, BC: Pacific Agri-food Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Browse for publications relating to agricultural research performed by these  two British Columbia research centres operated by the Federal government. Date updated: 2005-06-19.
• e-Print Archive (arXiv.org). Automated print archives dating back to 1991 which disseminates research into physics, mathematics, nonlinear sciences and computer science. Documents are available in a variety of electronic formats, including Adobe PDF files generated dynamically. Site is mirrored world wide.
• FAO Corporate Document Repository. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. View documents online in HTML or download as Adobe Acrobat PDF files. Searches are by keyword, title keyword, or through an advanced search interface for meetings, publications or articles. This site is part of the FAO Virtual Library. Date accessed: 2002-12-26. Date added: 2002-12-26.
• Flora and Fauna of the Great Lakes Region: A Multimedia Digital Collection. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library Fish and Mammals Divisions, Museum of Zoology Fungus Collections, University Herbarium. The project started in October 2000, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to September 2002, and its main goals are " the development of increased access to the Great Lakes region Flora and Fauna portions of the Museums collections" and " the development of an extensible infrastructure for putting Natural History collections online." There are three types of searches: by collection, by geographic location, and by keyword. The site includes links to other resources relating to digitized natural history collections.  Date accessed: 2002-12-18. Date added: 2002-12-18.
• Galileo Digitale (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze, Italy). Selected digital facsimiles of works by Galileo via an Italian-only database. Requires a Java-enabled Web browser to view the document images.
• Galileo Galilei's Notes on Motion." Joint Project of Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin." Digital facsimile of Galileo's manuscript Ms. Gal. 72. Bilingual interface (English and Italian). Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Galileo//thek: Archivi Digitali Integrati di Risorse Galileiane (Integrated Digital Repository of Galileian Resources). Florence, Italy: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Institute and Museum of the History of Science). Bilingual interface (Italiam and English). Variant title: Archivio Integrato Galileo. See also: IMSS Digital Library. Date accessed: 2004-08-23. Date added: 2004-08-23.
• Gender & Science Digital Library. " ... a cutting-edge, collaborative project between the Gender & Diversities Institute at EDC [Education Development Center, Inc.] and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse at Ohio State University, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). ... The primary objective of the GSDL is to create a high-quality, interactive library of gender and science STEM resources for K-12, higher education (community college and university), women's studies, teacher preparation programs, and informal learning environments." Date accessed: 2002-10-09. Date added: 2002-10-09.
• Geology of Lehigh and Northampton Counties,  Pennsylvania:  Historical  Works. Bethlehem, PA: Library and Technology Services, Lehigh University. Multimedia digital collection, including a searchable/browsable two volume Pennsylvania Geological Survey book (1939-1941) and the  Guidebook to Places of Geologic Interest in the Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania (1939 Adobe PDF file) by Benjamin L. Miller (1874-1944), a geologist and professor of geology at Lehigh University. Site uses ContentDM. Date accessed: 2003-12-19. Date added: 2003-12-19.
• GetInfo. Hannover, Germany: Universitätsbibliothek Hannover und Technische Informationsbibliothek. Search this free database for science and technology literature detailed abstracts for electronic journals are available. The articles themselves must be purchased via a subscription to GetInfo or on a one-time basis. Date accessed: 2002-10-07. Date added: 2002-10-07.
• Harmonia Macrocosmica by Andreas Cellarius (1661). Searchable/browsable digital facsimile of this astronomical atlas produced by University of Utah's Marriott Library.
• Harvard Sciences Digital Library. Cambridge, MA: Physics Research Library, Department of Physics, Harvard University, 2004-. A DSpace repository of Harvard University electronic documents. Date accessed: 2004-10-04. Date added: 2004-10-04.
• HighWire Press (Stanford University Libraries). Online full-text journal articles. A set of links to other free full-text science publications is available.
• Historical Series (Agriculture Canada and Canada's Digital Collections). Digital facsimiles in HTML format of monographs on various facets of Canada's agricultural history in which the Canadian government played a part.
• IMSS Digital Library. Florence, Italy: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Institute and Museum of the History of Science). Bilingual interface (Italiam and English). Includes works by Galileo, with the earliest publication dating to 1540. Over 36,000 images relating to the iconography of science are also available. See also: Galileo//thek. Date accessed: 2004-08-23. Date added: 2004-08-23.
• InformIT Free Library. Indianapolis, IN: InformIT Division, Pearson Education. Searchable/browsable collection of full-text works on computing science and information technology. Most of the titles are about non-current versions of programming languages or computer technology. Date accessed: 2002-02-10. Date added: 002-02-10.
• johnstonia (Ian C. Johnston hosted by Liberal Studies Department, Malaspina University-College). Includes several full-text works important to the history of science in HTML format.
• Livingstone Online: Explore the medical writings of David Livingstone. London, Eng.: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. Summary: " The aim of Livingstone Online is to use the potential of electronic publishing to make available an online edition of the medical and scientific correspondence of David Livingstone. Our efforts in this regard have been kindly funded by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL and the Wellcome Trust." Date accessed: 2010-04-28. Date added: 2010-04-28.
• Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, Bibliothèque numérique. Created by the library of this research institute in Lyons, France, this digitized collection contains  50 public-domain works in various languages and from various dates pertaining to ancient Egyptian and Graeco-Roman civilizations, and the history of archaeology. Date accessed: 2005-09-25. Date added: 2005-09-25.
• mémSIC: mémoires de 3ème cycle en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication. " This is a WEB site of the INIST-CNRS and URFIST of Nice in collaboration with the CCSD/CNRS and the server is hosted by the Computing Center of the IN2P3 in Lyon (France)." Searchable/browsable open archive (self-archiving) server of academic work in the fields of information science and communication. The site uses eprints.org open archive software. Date accessed: 2005-02-27. Date added: 2005-02-27.
• MendelWeb. Roger B. Blumberg, 1997. Summary: " MendelWeb is an educational resource for teachers and students interested in the origins of classical genetics, introductory data analysis, elementary plant science, and the history and literature of science. Constructed around Gregor Mendel's 1865 paper 'Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden' and a revised version of the English translation by C.T. Druery and William Bateson, 'Experiments in Plant Hybridization', MendelWeb is offered as a public sourcebook and collaborative environment compatible with a variety of guided and independent studies." Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Missouri Botanical Garden, Botanicus. Summary: " a freely accessible portal to historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library." Date accessed: 2010-04-10. Date added: 2010-04-10.
• The NASA Astrophysics Data System: The Digital Library for Physics, Astrophysics, and Instrumentation. Hosted by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. ADS consists of " four bibliographic databases containing more than 2.9 million records: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Physics and Geophysics, and preprints in Astronomy. The main body of data in the ADS consists of bibliographic records, which are searcheable through our Abstract Service query forms, and full-text scans of much of the astronomical literature which can be browsed though our Browse interface." Date accessed: 2002-10-09. Date added: 2002-10-09.
• National Science Digital Library. Boulder, CO: National Science Digital Library. The NSDL is funded by the National Science Foundation and background information on its development is found in the NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education. Content is targeted for online dissemination beginning in December 2002. Date accessed: 2002-09-18. Date added: 2002-09-18.
• National Transportation Library. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, U.S. Department of Transportation. " A virtual library for the transportation community," this library offers an international  Digital Collection on transportation subjects that you can keyword search or browse by category. Date accessed: 2004-08-06. Date added: 2004-08-06.
• The Newton Project. London, England: Centre for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College London, in collaboration with Cambridge University. Summary: " Created in 1998, the Newton Project seeks to make available in electronic form facsimiles and transcriptions of these manuscripts and to display their original connections, along with full documentation relating to Newton's reading such as written notes and annotations. In addition to this, we intend to produce a complete printed edition of these texts, based on a diplomatic transcription of the relevant parts of Newton's manuscript nachlass, and accompanied where necessary by translations and a full critical apparatus." In some cases manuscript digitization and transcription is occurring within institutions outside the United Kingdom that preserve Newton's writings. Date accessed: 2005-10-27. Date added: 2005-10-27.
• The 19th Century Scientific American Online. Partial digital facsimile and HTML representation of the first two volumes of Scientific American. A partial, keyword-searchable index to volumes 1 through 14 is also available.
• Nineteenth-Century Texts On the Daguerreotype (Secrets of the Dark Chamber: The Art of the American Daguerreotype hosted in Helios: Photography Online, Smithsonian American Art Museum). A selection of 19th and 20th century texts (periodical articles, book extracts, and archival records) in HTML format  about the daguerreotype. Date added: 2001-12-04.
• NRC Research Press Journals (National Research Council of Canada). Full-text access only to Canadian Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to several Canadian and international journals in Adobe PDF files.
• OASE (Open Access to Scientific Literature Online): Karlsruher Virtueller Volltextkatalog. Karlsruhe, Germany: Universitätsbibliothek, Universität Karlsruhe. Bilingual (German and English) full-text search service to scientific publications available in various institutional repositories in  Germany and elsewhere. Date accessed: 2004-03-06. Date added: 2004-03-06.
• Once Upon a Mine: Story of Pre-Confederation Mines on the Island of Newfoundland by Wendy Martin. Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, special volume 26 (c1983). Online edition hosted by Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site Project. Text is searchable.
• Progetto scienza per tutti: archivio storico del Dipartimento di Astronomia. Bologna, Italy: Dipartimento di Astronomia [and] Sistema Museale d'Ateneo, Università degli Studi di Bologna, 2000-. Digital facsimile collection of works by three astronomers, Eustachio Manfredi, Vittorio Francesco Stancari and Eustachio Zanotti,  relating to their studies  at the Bologna Observatory, along with links to other digitized historical works held by the university's library. Date accessed: 2004-08-28. Date added: 2004-08-28.
• Project Linnaeus (Published by Centre international d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, Ferney-Voltaire, and International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies hosted by Rutgers University). International collaborative project funded by Swedish sources to make the correspondence of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) available on the Web: The Linnaean Correspondence.
• Public Library of Science. San Francisco, CA. Founded in October 2000, the Public Library of Science " is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource." The PLoS established itself as a publisher of open access journals in 2003. Date added: 2007-02-05.
• PubliCentrale: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Publications. Ottawa, ON: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Search for and view or download agricultural research publications in HTML or Adobe PDF formats. Date accessed: 2005-06-19. Date added: 2005-06-19.
• Publications of the U.S. Geological Survey (Community of Science). Search or browse for all online publications of the USGS in its four fields of scientific and research interest: biology, geology, mapping, and water. The USGS Web site provides alternate access to the same sources tracked through the COS site.
• Retrospektive Digitalisierung wissenschaftlicher Rezensionsorgane und Literaturzeitschriften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus dem deutschen Sprachraum. Biefeld, Germany: Bibliothek, Universität Biefeld. Full-text searchable or browsable collection of German language science and literary magazines. Several  of these magazines reported on global events from a German perspective. Date added: 2002-09-04. Date updated: 2004-03-06.
• SciELO: Scientific Electronic Library Online. São Paulo, Brazil: FAPESP BIREME. Trilingual interface: English, Portuguese and Spanish. Date accessed: 2002-10-10. Date added: 2002-10-10.
• Science.gov: FirstGov for Science. Launched on December 5, 2002, " Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results." Full-text documents can be found by searching for " text" . Information can be accessed through a classification system or by keyword searches. Date accessed: 2002-12-18. Date added: 2002-12-18.
• SIOExplorer Digital Library. San Diego, CA: Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Summary: " Data, documents and images from 822 expeditions by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) since 1903 are becoming web-accessible under a usage policy through the new SIOExplorer project, and will become part of the overall NSF-funded National Science Digital Library (NSDL).  The effort is a collaboration among researchers at Scripps, computer scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and archivists and librarians from the UCSD Library."   Date  accessed: 2005-05-23. Date  added: 2005-05-23.
• Virtual Library of Energy, Science, and Technology Information (United States, Office of Scientific and Technical Information). The EnergyFiles link is a search gateway (EnergyPortal Search) to over 500 Web sites and more than two dozen databases on the subject of energy. Searches can be tailored to specific topics or databases, and a subject list of predefined searches is available. Some content may be restricted to United States Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.
• The Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers. Washington, DC: American Memory, Library of Congress, 2003. Digitized items from the Manuscript Division and the Prints and Photographs Division pertaining to the Wright brothers' efforts to create the " world's first powered, controlled and sustained flight. Included in the collection are correspondence, diaries and notebooks, scrapbooks, drawings, printed matter, and other documents, as well as the Wrights' collection of glass-plate photographic negatives." Date accessed: 2004-03-27. Date added: 2004-03-27.
• World Conservation Digital Library (World Conservation Union [International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources] hosted by University of California, Berkeley). Demonstration database of bibliographic records linked to full-text documents acquired by the World Conservation Union.
• The Writings of Charles Darwin on the Web. Edited by Dr. John van Wyhe. HTML transcriptions of published works by Charles Darwin, who wrote The On the Origin of  Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). Date accessed: 2004-10-28. Date added: 2004-10-28.

^  RETURN TO TOP  ^ | <   BACK TO THE LOBBY   <

Compiled by David Mattison, Victoria Telecommunity Network, BC. Copyright © 2000-2011 by the BC Community Network Association. This site may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion without the consent of the BCCNA.