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This issue attempts to provide a general background for exploring the increasingly complex world of abstracting and indexing services. It is also an indication of the involvement of libraries in the total development of abstracting and indexing services. The first paper by Adams and Baker discusses one of the basic problems in this area which is the proper structuring of subjects, for inclusion in any service. The relationship between ‘discipline’‐and ‘mission’‐oriented services is covered, and in this chapter a common base is reached for future discussion. The National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services appears to have collapsed into a fairly passive role, but the editor has presented some informative notes which can act as a basis for a more definitive report. Stella Keenan provides a valuable contribution to the background of abstracting and indexing services in the physical sciences and Louise Schultz discusses new developments in the area of the biological sciences, demonstrating the complexities of providing access in a specialized scientific area. The paper by Tate and Wood is entitled ‘Libraries and Abstracting and Indexing Services—a study in interdependency’. Although, based primarily on their experiences at ‘Chemical Abstracts’, they bring out the relationship between libraries and specialized services. Another introduction to the Science Citation Index is given by Morton Malin, from the Institute for Scientific Information, bringing out the interests of librarians in this new indexing tool. Charles Bernier discusses the procedures and problems of production of subject indexes, based on his own extensive experience. He covers problems of term selection and correction in addition to the physical preparation of copy. James Wood, Head Librarian of Chemical Abstracts Service, proposes a co‐operative venture between librarians and abstracts producers in a comprehensive list of periodicals for chemistry and chemical engineering. The final paper by Andrew Aimes, senior officer of the COSATI staff, gives general guidelines and information basic to the theory behind national information systems, referring to the ‘System Study of Abstracting and Indexing in the United States’, prepared by SDC under contract to COSATI.

The recently published Inventory of abstracting and indexing services produced in the UK provides a considerable amount of both ‘hard’ and indicative data from which some general trends in the development of abstracting and indexing services can be deduced. A study of these trends was undertaken and the findings have just been published in the BLRDD report series. This paper presents, in a summary of those findings, information about the size, longevity, ownership and scope of such services.

UNESCO is instructed by its constitution to ‘Maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge … by initiating methods of international co‐operation calculated to give the peoples of all countries access to the printed and published materials produced by any of them’. As one of the methods of carrying out this function the programmes of Unesco both for 1947 and 1948 specifically included plans to ‘facilitate the improvement of scientific documentation and abstracting’, and an Expert Committee on Scientific Abstracting was called together at Unesco House in Paris during the 7th, 8th, and 9th of April 1948, under the joint authority of the Libraries and Natural Science sections, for preliminary work in connexion with an international conference to be held at a later date.

This paper is concerned with the purpose of functions of abstracting and abstracting services, touching on indexing only in relation to the indexing of abstracts, and concentrating mainly on ‘hard copy’ printed services. It is presented from the viewpoint of both a producer of an abstracting service and a user of other peoples' abstracting services.

The suspension of some of the great German medical abstracting services during World War II and the keenly felt need for a comprehensive abstracting service in English, particularly for clinical medicine, brought about the establishment of Excerpta Medica as a non‐profit organization in 1947. Since its inception the service has expanded into several sections covering not only the usual divisions of clinical and preclinical medicine but also subjects like Cancer and Tuberculosis which are of present‐day interest and importance. Now that some of the German abstracting services have been revived there is apt to be some amount of duplication between them and Excerpta Medica, and the small library in particular has to evaluate them to get the best for the money or the most suitable for its purposes.

Describes abstracting and indexing services for science and technology produced in India. Analyses the services with respect to such aspects as frequency, nature of publications covered, chronological development, and subject coverage. Concludes that most of the services are selective and that engineering and technology are better covered than are pure sciences. Recommends that the coverage of these services should be broader‐based, if anything approaching total bibliographic control of scientific and technical literature in India is to be achieved.

In a previous paper (J. Doc. 20 (4) 1964, 212–35) a series of tests on the coverage, overlap, and indexing of abstracts journals were described. Briefly, these were carried out by selecting recent, comprehensive bibliographies on specific subjects, searching the appropriate abstracts journals via the author indexes to determine the number of references given in the bibliography that were abstracted, then consulting the subject indexes to try to locate those references which are known to have been abstracted. A further eight bibliographies have been studied, and the results are reported here.

This article is concerned with services providing information about management (e.g. personnel practices, the use of management techniques) rather than the broader area of information for management. The manager's need for information services is examined by reference to actual enquiries put by managers in their daily work. The present state of documentation services (e.g. books, periodicals, abstracting and indexing services, guides to research) is examined, together with the various kinds of libraries providing information services on management. Finally, reasons for the non‐use of existing services by managers are examined and suggestions are made for the removal of these obstacles.

There is not enough space in this introduction to present a definitive analysis of the word serial, or even of the qualification of the term for this column, reference serial, and I would refer all such questions to the monographs treating the subject of serial bibliography. The purpose of this column simply is to review abstracting services, indexes, digests, serial bibliographies, loose‐leaf updating services, yearbooks, reviewing services, and annual guides and directories which are issued on a continuing basis for reference uses. Serials to be generally excluded from review in “Reference Serials” include monographic series, encyclopedic sets, proceedings, magazines and government publications, all of which are either treated elsewhere in RSR or other journals of the profession. There is no clear‐cut division that will define the coverage of this column since some series like annual reviews, which collect papers on a specific topic, deserve to be treated as reference serials, and some magazines are so highly specialized that they are in essence abstracts and indexes.

Computer‐based information services covering major disciplines of science have been developed recently from certain traditional abstracting and indexing services. A wide range of secondary information services is provided to satisfy the various information requirements generated by the present complexity of scientific and technological work. This development has caused radical changes in the administration structure, pricing policies and funding of the organizations providing information services.