Algae on the internet

Increasingly electronic communication and a variety of electronic resources are accessible to a larger group of people within the scientific community. This paper outlines the range of resources that are available, and comments on their current and future value to the phycological community. Resources discussed include mailing lists and newsgroups. These are useful tools for rapid, informal, targeted communication, although the technology employed places limitations on the type and format of information which may be distributed. The World Wide Web (WWW) has the potential to overcome these limitations, the quality, complexity and value to the phycological community of the sites on the WWW are extremely variable, with some material being of dubious quality. However, it is possible to access high quality resources including culture collection catalogues, high quality images and microbial and molecular databases. As well as some of the current resources, this paper discusses some possible directions for the future of phycology on the internet.