Media...

For most of the history of Systematics, the dissemination medium has been ink on paper. Names and classifications appear in books and articles in journals. However, given the magnitude of information required to document all living organisms, systematists recently began to explore different media. Microfilm and microfiche were experimented with in the 1960s, but have been forgotten with the emergence of the personal computer and the Internet. Today, CD- ROM and the World-Wide-Web on the Internet offer the ideal way to disseminate information about organisms.

In the beginning, all biosystematic information was included in a single work (Systema Naturae), but as the number of organisms known and the information about them increased, information was scattered among more specialized and less comprehensive works. So, that today biosystematic information is found in an array of different types of publications, from field guides, faunas and floras, revisions, monographs, catalogs and checklists. Electronic media now has the capacity to storage all kind of information and in large amounts, so again comprehensive works are possible.