Darwin's books to go online at Biodiversity Heritage Library

Charles Darwin's personal scientific library with books containing scribbled notes and comments by the English scientist are being put online.

When the project is completed, people will be able to access 1,480 books. Of these, 730 annotated books that contain abundant research notes in their margins are the first to be digitised.

These notes give people a glimpse into what made Darwin 'tick', for example highlighting passages he found relevant to his work, what areas got him thinking or just annoyed or concerned him.

For example, his friend Charles Lyell wrote in his famous Principles of Geology that there were definite limits to the variation of species. Darwin wrote alongside this: "If this were true adios theory."

Putting the books online is a collaborative effort involving Cambridge University Library, where many of Darwin's books are kept, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum, and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Anne Jarvis, Cambridge University librarian, said: "The Darwin collections are among the most important and popular held within Cambridge University Library.

"While there has been much focus on his manuscripts and correspondence, his library hasn't always received the attention it deserves – for it is as he engaged with the ideas and theories of others that his own thinking evolved."

Although it will take some months to get the entire collection digitised, already 330 of the most heavily annotated books are available online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Most of Darwin's personal library rests at Cambridge University Library and at Down House, his home. While the majority of the books are scientific, some are humanities texts on subjects that he transformed into scientific topics.

The digitisation project was jointly sponsored by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and independent US government agency, the National Endowment of the Humanities through a transatlantic digitisation collaboration grant.