Full series of Archives of natural history now available online

SHNH Editor, Dr Charles Nelson reports that the uploading of the electronic versions of the back issues of Archives of natural history, including the earliest volumes which had the title Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, on to the journal’s site at Edinburgh University Press is now completed.

All volumes from 1 to 37 are available online to all members of the Society who have renewed their subscription for 2010.

Free Sample Issue Volume 36 No. 1 April 2009.

Link to Volume 37 No 2 list of contents and abstracts

Volumes 1 to 9 formed the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, the original title of Archives of natural history, and they include "hidden gems" such as facsimiles of Colonel Richard Henry Beddome’s own copies of his articles about Indian reptiles (volume 1 part 10). Beddome’s manuscript annotations and corrections to the published articles are visible on the facsimile which also reproduced the coloured images.

Also among the issues is the much consulted, and long out-of-print, "Papers on the Sowerby Family", volume 6 part 6 (1974) which includes R. J. Cleevely’s bibliography of the natural history works of the family.

Members of the SHNH have free access to Archives of natural history in electronic form via the Edinburgh University Press website at www.euppublishing.com/journal/anh.

You can view a continually up-dated list of the “top three” papers on the Archives page [www.euppublishing.com/journal/anh].

To access any of these, go to the listings page and then click on the volume part which you wish to access. This page will be updated as more of the issues are uploaded.

If you are not a member of the Society and would like to have access via the internet to the current issue and back issues, we cordially invite you to join the Society. You will also receive the journal in printed form twice a year as well as our chatty Newsletter and all the other privileges and benefits of membership.

The publications/archives-of-natural-history/cumulative-index.htmlcumulative index to the journal (volumes 1 to 35 inclusive) is also available.

In 2009, there were 25,746 “hits” on abstracts of papers published in Archives volumes 30 to 36, and 4,162 full-text files of the papers so far available on-line were downloaded.