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One might paraphrase a famous Pogo remark into "I have seen the future and the future is here." 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. In terms of research, scientific botanical information is now widely
available not only to the meager few that might use such information on a regular basis, but to anyone wishing - even at the
whim - to gain that information.
Today, on the world-wide web, one can see the herbarium collection John Clayton assembled from 1734 until the 1750. One
can see images from the first one hundred volumes of Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and of course can learn an enormous
amount about botany from the many web pages that have been developed by faculty members around the world to teach not
only their students, but students anywhere in the world. Even esoteric things like botanical nomenclature are on the web now -
information for any who might wish such information.
In our rush to embrace this new means for disseminating information, some seem to think that the single greatest storehouse of
human knowledge, our libraries, are no longer necessary. Young students in particular rely heavily, and sometimes exclusively,
on the web for all of their information. This is both foolish and an affront to the purpose of gaining a broad, well-rounded
education.
Still, to state another saying, if you can beat them, join them. The role of the library, and especially as it relates to botanical
resources - and in particular systematic botanical resources - will undergo substantial change as we move further along the
electronic road of the world-wide web. Libraries, always the great repositories of information, will remain the single most
important place for long-term information storage. Libraries will, and must, continue to go; they must also have the support of
scholars and other users, and of institutions that provide their basic funding. What must happen now, however, is look far into
the future and begin to anticipate what the future library will be like, what information storage and retrieval will entail, and set
global priorities that will both service and protect our human-based knowledge.
Looking strictly at the needs of systematic botany, some of the future can be glimpsed. First, we must begin to look to the past
and conserve critical works that, without prompt care, will be lost. All too often the conservation requirements of a library far
exceed its yearly budget. Thus, items are lost daily through budgetary neglect. In deciding how and what to conserve,
institutions ought to work globally. With present-day forms of digitizing and similar means to imaging printed documents, many
works can be saved. By making such works available electronically - over the web or by cd-rom and other forms to
presentation - these works can become readily available. This, coupled with the careful preservation of select copies of the
work will free the majority of libraries of having to go through the costly expense of conserve their copy as well. It is true,
individual copies will be lost, but unless there is a coordinated effort to conserve works, all copies will degrade to the point
none can be saved.
It is time for the botanical community to work closely with the library community to establish the necessary means to ensure
preservation and conservation of threatened works, and to assist in developing the priorities for the effort.
Second, even if we are in the age of electronic information, hard-copy works will remain the primary means by which
information in archived, and libraries will remain their principal homes. It is therefore imperative that we in the botanical
community support the future funding of libraries and take an active and responsible role in the acquisition and maintenance of
the collections. To this end, however, we must be realistic and realize that libraries in the future will become more and more
specialized. Too, we must accept that our local library cannot be the repository of everything, and we must work both
nationally and globally to develop major, discipline-based repositories and insist that these will obtain all information in the
discipline.
In this regard, allow me to suggest the integrated roles of three libraries. I will use McKeldin Library at the University of
Maryland - a graduate/research library, the Botany Library at the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Agricultural Library.
All three are located in and around Washington, D.C., the home of numerous other libraries, most notably the Library of
Congress and the National Library of Medicine. Library. Without doubt I work in an area filled with wonderful library
resources, and there is hardly an item I can not find locally.
The McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland serves a broad array of educational and research needs. Its holdings are
modest compared to other, major research university libraries in the United States. In fact the library rates at or near the bottom
in budget, acquisitions and holdings compared to its peer institutions. Nonetheless, during my thirty years at the University, the
holdings in systematic botany have grown significantly. In addition to having an array of local and regional journals, as well as
the usual national and international ones, we have obtained through the timely purchase of the entire stock of rare book dealers,
a large number of items that are infrequently found in the United States. Likewise, we have purchased microfiche copies of
most of the rare books and journals in systematic botany. In short, what the University has done is acquire items that are now
routinely acquired at the other, local institutions, and then has obtained microfiche copies of rare works that otherwise are only
of restricted use at the other libraries.
The role of the library in the Botany Department at the Smithsonian Institution is much more focused. It concentrates on
systematic botany, primarily, with lesser emphases in the areas of ecology, physiology, cell and molecular biology. Its holding
are extensive but limited in the sense that as an institution, the Smithsonian did not start a library until the 1860s so that much of
the early work, so critical to taxonomists, is limited. This library, for example, has obtained the herbaria available on microfiche,
and thus like the University of Maryland, they too provide a local service for all by making this information readily available
without having other institutions go to the expensive of duplicating the collection.
The National Agricultural Library is mandated by the 1862 authorizing legislation establishing the Department of Agriculture to
obtain all works in agricultural in the broadest sense of that term. That was traditionally interpreted as including botany, and the
library has obtained over the decades numerous rare works and obtained, until the 1970s, a rich and diversity collections of
journals from throughout the world in botany in general, and systematic botany in particular. Over the last three decades,
however, that has changed so much so that the current holdings of the library, while still extensive, are now limited. Thus, not
only are critical works in agricultural and botany no longer being obtained, but those critical to systematic botany have
disappeared as well. Of critical importance, the loss of these monographs and journals means that these works are not only not
available locally, but are hardly (if at all) available in the United States. In short, the mandate of Congress and the vision of
President Lincoln is not being meet. The neglect is not on the part of the library but on Congress and the various administrations
that have permitted the erosion of the library's budget to the point that it can not obtain all works in agricultural in the broadest
sense of that term as originally envisioned.
The failures of the National Agricultural Library to maintain its holding is having an impact upon the availability of information in
the United States. But this failure is not unique to this one library in the United States, or to similar types of libraries in other
nations. There is an epidemic of neglect for which this is only one example.
The third point, therefore, is this. The roles of the national, regional and local libraries must be examined anew in the United
States and in other nations in the world. Such a review ought to begin immediately with the goal of completing such a review
within three years. Then, those reviews ought to be considered globally, looking at the roles of libraries on a global basis with
the goal of formulating global, national and regional mandates for the acquisition, conservation and preservation of print and
non-print media. I see the responsibility of national libraries to acquire nearly all items of national interest with a concomitant
global responsibility in one or more areas. Likewise, I see specialized national libraries, like the National Agricultural Library,
being the primary repository of all works in agriculture, again in the broadest sense of that term, with the regional libraries (in the
United States this would be the Land Grant institutions) taking only specialized subsets within the broad area of agriculture. In
this way, all of the global information on agriculture will be available in the United States in at least two places, the National
Agricultural Library and at one of the Land Grant institution libraries.
To what extent we move classical information onto the web should not depend upon interest or (worse yet) prettiness - the two
seemingly operative criteria of the day. Rather, this should be determine primarily on the need to conserve information before it
is lost. By spreading the cost globally each institution can do its part, but only if the institutions are willing to work cooperatively.
It can not be the function of the United States to pay for the conservation of all human knowledge - this is a global
responsibility. Likewise, there is no longer needs to be a concern about availability - the freedom brought to the global
community by the world-wide web has altered that forever.
And what can we do, as botanists, in this global effort? Be in the forefront. Use our works as the means by which the
technology is refined and new methodology developed. If the herbarium of John Clayton can be made available to anyone
wishing to see it, and the images of Curtis's Botanical Magazine can be seen, then so too can other works of interest to
botanists. We can take the lead if we wish. I say we should.
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