Rod Page, professor of taxonomy at the University of Glasgow gave two fascinating and complementary talks on the future of taxonomy in London on March 17th. I have pulled together the various stands of Rod’s talk at the Natural History Museum, which are given below. If you do nothing else (and have a spare hour!), watch the video of Rod’s talk. Unfortunately the video quality is rather poor, and you will need to turn the sound right up to hear him. Also there are a couple of very short breaks in the video where the tapes had to be changed. Nevertheless, Rod provides an entertaining and convincing argument for taxonomy's digital future. Thanks to Chris Willcock for the AV assistance, and the Research Committee for financial support.

"Going digital: what's in it for taxonomy and taxonomists?"
Flett Theatre, Natural History Museum, 11-12.00. Followed by 30 minutes of questions and answers.

Going Digital - by Rod Page from Vince Smith on Vimeo.
Video of Rod’s talk is Copyright NHM, 2009.

Many within the NHM will not be able to access these resources because of controls on standard NHM computer systems. There are several solutions to this. The simplest is to access these resources from home since your home PC is very unlikely to have these limitations. Alternatively try downloading the alternative formats of the source files. Specifically the PPTX, PPT, or PDF files of the slides, and the mv4 file of the video. My attempt to pull together an executive summary of Rod's talk is also now available.