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information will be freely exchangeable between one Institute and another, and the methods used can be easily understood from country to country.

It is perhaps worth mentioning here that the management of information by computer-based methods is by no means confined to collections of preserved specimens. Many of us have been concerned for a number of years in establishing unified information systems for what are spoken of as plant genetic resources. By this phrase is meant the living collections of seeds or plants which are preserved for the use of plant breeders and geneticists, and which represent the end products of many thousands of years of evolution under domestication. As an example, work is in progress at Kew and elsewhere to preserve in a living state the seeds of interesting and threatened wild species in seed banks. Computer based data banks are necessary to store and sort the information on these.

Clearly these seed banks, gene banks or germ plasm collections present the same problems of data management as do the preserved collections which we are to be discussing during this present conference. And indeed, if we can find it possible to agree on the same information management systems for museum collections of preserved plants and animals as we use for collections of living seeds and tissue cultures then we shall have taken an extremely important step indeed.

So much for the general aspects of the problem. I should like to continue with a few remarks on how the organising committee has attempted to structure the programme of this meeting.

In the first place we wanted to try and focus on the problems by asking a number of herbarium directors to say what sort of problems exist and how they would like to see solutions worked out, not in detail, but in general terms. In other words we want to begin by identifying the problems, most of which will be common to all herbaria. It is hoped that these papers will bring out ideas from other delegates related to the sort of information they would like to obtain from their own collections but have been unable to do so under present circumstances through lack of electronic data processing methods.

On Thursday we shall be hearing from various speakers about the various information systems they are using and how these are being applied to the information problems they wish to solve.