Hardly anyone today in the botanical community is unaware of the world-wide web. Each of us is inextricably bound to it much as two or perhaps three generations ago our parents or grandparents were bound to the telephone. How we community, how we relate one to another, is now and forever changed.
Information is now more valuable than ever.
Not only is it more widely available, not only is it more abundant, not only is it more critical, it is necessary to accomplish almost any task relating to teaching, research and service. From elementary school to graduate school, faculty, staff and students are engaged in accessing information, reassessing that information, and transforming it into a form suitable for their own narrow purposes. In botany one can find teaching web sites for K-3 students upwards to the most esoteric needs of the graduate students. Today, on the world-wide web, one can see the herbarium collection John Clayton assembled from 1734 until the 1750. Even esoteric things like botanical nomenclature are on the web now - information for any who might wish such information.