Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Royal Society Opens Free Online Archive

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mr.-newton-meet-mr.-boyle dept.

greenechidna writes "The Register reports that the Royal Society has put its archives online. From the article: 'One of the world's most important historical records will be made available online for the first time today. All the Royal Society's journals are free for two months and include stone-cold scientific classics going back to 1665 and the foundations of modern inquiry.'" You can set up your own account at the Royal Society; if you follow the link in the Reg article, you get logged in to some random account.

3 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thanks, and I mean that, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although a great gesture, this has far less use than I had hoped.

    While I agree that having searchable text would be handy, keep in mind that what you are looking at is what people had to contend with for the past 350 years. They managed to do okay with it.

  2. Re:Thanks, and I mean that, but... by JesseL · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Not error-corrected OCRs of scanned images, but the actual images. Great for historians, I suppose, but absolutely bloody useless for searching.

    Well it's all there for you - get to work.
    --
    "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
  3. There goes one more curmudgeon's anecdote by Anthony · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Students at my University rarely visit the stacks these days. There are plenty of computers and a whole slew of online journals. When relating this story, I would tell people there is still a need to access the Transactions of the Royal Society. When I took my son on a tour of one of the libraries, I went straight to the Transactions and showed him a paper from the 18th century,

    Well, I was impressed.

    --
    Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance