Tijdschrift voor Entomologie 150 volumes: one and a half century of systematic entomology in a changing world

In 2007 this Journal celebrates its 150th volume and its 150th birthday. Although it is not the only journal reaching this age, it is still a rare event amongst entomological journals to publish a volume every year during one and a half century, and without changing its name. During the 150 years of the journal’s existence, society as a whole, science, as well as the entomological community, have changed considerably. Where 150 years ago written media were almost the only way of communication between scientists, as printed publications, or handwritten letters, now the printed media are often considered obsolete, and old fashioned, and communication has been taken over by the new media. The role of paper journals evidently is changing and journals have to adapt to modern ways of communication. The Tijdschrift voor Entomologie (further abbreviated as TvE) is following this trend as well by developing a website (http://www.nev.nl/tve) and providing pdf files of the published papers. The requirements for the validity of species descriptions by the Code (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 1999) prevents journals from completely dropping paper publication in favour of web publication, but in other fields of science this is already a fact. In this paper we will briefly review the history of TvE, particularly with regard to changes in content, with reference to authorship, taxonomic group, topics etc. At the occasion of the publication of this issue, we also will upgrade the TvE website with the complete index to 150 volumes, and pdf files of several recent volumes. Here we will also present some information on the methods used preparing the index for the website.