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Coleopterology, i.e. a study of beetles has been established and developed by coleopterists: professional researchers and laymen. However, in hundreds of sites and pages on beetles available on the Internet very little attention is given to the role of those specialists and nearly no information is provided on Russian coleopterists. To amend the situation is a task of our site. We will pay particular attention to the human factor. We venture to hope that already now our site is unique in the world information web because it contains tens of personal and memorial pages arranged according to a certain design and providing a comprehensive idea of achievements and traditions of St. Petersburg coleopterological school of thought. We think that we will soon succeed in accumulating on our site information on the majority of Russian coleopterists and also on our colleagues from the CIS and make it the centre of information on the coleopterological studies in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Information on coleopterists is included in 4 parts of our site, which have been separated by strictly formal characteristics. The logical centre is the part entitled "Our Team". It includes forms of specialists now on the staff of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. We do not put any "fiction" about ourselves, but each of us can add to his standard personal page any number of pages with any information that would be of interest for at least a few visitors of the site.
The largest part "Our Colleagues" is dedicated to those who cooperate or cooperated in the past with the Zoological Institute. Pages in it are arranged according to a standard format and necessarily contain introduction of a specialist written by someone from the Zoological Institute. We regard the title "Colleague of Researchers of the Zoological Institute" as honorary and only coleopterists of our team (comprising 12 specialists) can confer this title and participate in writing this part.
For all who wish to have a personal page in our site, but do not have the status of "Our Colleague" yet, and also for those authors of the site who are not coleopterists there is a part entitled "Guests of Our Site". For that part we do not request observing a strict form. Anyone including the specialist himself can contribute to that part. It is obligatory to indicate the most important data: date and place of birth, detailed address, E-mail address and a photograph. The rest can be presented in an arbitrary form.
A.L. Lobanov, November 1999