From Linnaeus (1758) to today, the content of Biosystematic Information has not changed much. Likewise, the desires of users: They want to know what it is, what it does, and when and where it does it. What has changed is the magnitude of information, from a few thousand to millions of data points, and the media on which to disseminate it, from the printed page to a full range of electronic formats, such as CD-ROM (Compact Disk-Read Only Memory) disks and WWW (World-Wide-Web) on the Internet. This explosion of information and multimedia, at a time when support for Systematics is declining but awareness of the demands of users importance of BioSystematic information for the sustainable use of Biodiversity is increasing users' demands, provides the challenge for the new century. How the systematists in Washington are meeting the challenge is illustrated and demonstrated with products, from on- line databases to expert identification systems.

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This presentation was given at XXth International Congress of Entomology, Firenze, Italy, on 28 August 1996 in a symposium on Systematics and Evolutionary Biology in Pest Management. The presentation was converted to its current World Wide Web format with assistance of Jennifer E. Fairman. Additional notes on the tools used to prepare this WWW version and on the relationship of Scientific nomenclature and electronic dissemination are also provided.