Since 2007 the American Museum of Natural History has been working to digitize more than 30,000 of Charles Darwin’s manuscripts and notes. With a target date of June 2015, the project is nearing completion.  More than half of the documents are now available to search, browse, and read online. The collection of documents is organized according to periods of Darwin’s work.

Applications for Education
Through the documents and sketches being digitized by the American Museum of Natural History it is possible for students (high school and older) to see how Darwin developed his ideas over time.

For younger students, Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage is an outstanding virtual tour of Charles Darwin’s nearly five year journey on the Beagle. Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage has fourteen segments chronicling Darwin’s voyage from start to finish. Throughout the tour viewers will see sketches from the journey, hear readings from Darwin’s journals, and learn about the journey as a whole. The virtual tour is not limited to just Darwin’s work as a naturalist. Darwin, A Naturalist’s Voyage explores social issues of the time such as slavery.

And don’t forget that Google Maps offers Street View imagery of the Galapagos Islands. The imagery can take you underwater to view fish and sea turtles, to beaches to see sea lions sunbathing, and it can take along mangrove-lined shorelines. The imagery also lets you see inside the research facilities on the Galapagos Islands. You can explore all of the imagery on the Google Maps Views website.

H/T to Open Culture for the AMNH resource.