Well, 'everything' has NOT been switched to electronic format. It is just proposed that it is to be allowed. This has been the case for cultivar names for a while BUT with the proviso that certain institutions must possess hardcopies, or are provided with them by nurseries/authors. If technology was really so reliable and at the level needed, there would of course be something to translate an english description into botanical latin! T > I don't think the committee made a light decision to switch everything to > electronic format without first making it necessary to retrieve such data > many years in the future. Sure, PDFs will probably not exist in a couple of > decades, but the data behind such PDFs remain and could be transferred to > another format. > > In regard to loosing all the data on on one's computer, the idea of > electronic copies is that all the major servers on earth will have access > and storage of these data and retrievable from anywhere else. If one server > crashes, then others will still be online and available. That is the power > of the internet. Some people ask what if all the servers on earth suddenly > and simultaneously crash? The counter argument is that if such a thing were > to happen, we have a lot more to worry about than description of species! > > Nhu > > On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 8:20 AM, <totototo@telus.net> wrote: > > > On 21 Jul 2011, at 10:57, AW wrote: > > > > It also smells like a knee-jerk reaction "Oh, print is so old-school, so > > anti- > > digital, so anti-cybernetic." Tell that to someone whose home computer > > crashed > > and left them without printed backups of their contact lists. > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/