These two Darwin notebooks went missing 20 years ago, and just 15 months ago Cambridge University figured out that they were probably stolen?
Uh, OK, I kind of suspect that the Cambridge library needs to work on improving their security.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I don’t do heros. But. In the Amsterdam municipal archives I saw a letter Ch. Darwin wrote to the director of Artis, the Amsterdam zoo. Seeing his signature moved me as much as finding a fossil Nautiloid in the South of France when I was just 18.
@ ^ Which I take it moved you a lot then?
FWIW Just seen this story via ABC News
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-05/missing-charles-darwin-notebooks-returned-to-cambridge-library/100968798
& was going to post it on the Infinite thread myself only to see I’ve been beaten to it..
Explaining feelings to the unfeeling, is akin to explaining the fun of a joke to the humourless.
@ ^ René : Ouch. Sorry. I though I was making a bit of a joke there. Admittedly not a very good one..
The guards must be crazy.
Okay. Sand.
No, they knew they were missing from where they were supposed to be. It just took them 18 years to “fingertip check” everything in the library to make absolutely certain they weren’t merely misplaced. It’s a big library, with lots of documents in boxes and so forth. And they didn’t want to cause a false alarm.
There’s something very l-space about this story.
given the reality of a very old library with a deep history in possession of many very rare and valuable manuscripts and books and I am sure working under budget limits I am not surprised much that some things are missing.
there is an eager market for much of what they have and It is clear that their security and resource management procedures need to be modernized to best make use of what they have for the future
She just looked sooo happy! Lovely.
Hmmm, I think we know what happened to the Holy Grail now.
I hope it didn’t end up in the same storeroom as the Ark of the Covenant.
@10 Actually, I think they keep those at the Bodleian.
I have a feeling many of the Darwin family will be happy also (though not so happy that they got stolen in the first place). The core part of the collection was acquired from the family in 1948 and expanded by further gifts since. https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/manuscripts-university-archives/significant-archival-collections/darwin
xohjoh2n @11
more likely they are to be found in Castle Stal… aaaaaaaaaagggh
I imagine they have been digitised.
(I find it hard to imagine a scenario where the actual originals are of more than sentimental value — it’s the information they contain, not the medium itself)
@ Morales
They’re historical artifacts you dolt. No one is dependent on “the information they contain”.
Silentbob, to what supposedly imputed dependence do you refer?
Look: anything of the same age is no less a historical artifact.
(What do you imagine makes it significant?)
But sure, care about the form, not the content.
(His historical contribution is the physical historical artifacts, not the ideas or their exposition. I get your conceit)
“(I find it hard to imagine a scenario where the actual originals are of more than sentimental value — it’s the information they contain, not the medium itself)”
We can now solve very old criminal cases by extracting DNA from cigarette butts and disposable coffee cups, something unimaginable fifty years ago. Charles Darwin touched and breathed on these notebooks, who knows what information they contain that we haven’t even thought to look for yet.
Just a couple of little notebooks? Aberdeen (Scotland) municipal art gallery has lost over 1500 paintings recently- including many works by “collectable” painters. They put them “somewhere” refurbished the gallery, and can’t find them now. Nobody, it seems, was responsible for recording where they’d been put, or making sure they were still there, or checking their condition. The price of the lost works probably exceeds the $50 miliion they spent on the upgrade.