Serials are important enough to warrant separate treatment. Specialized knowledge and skill are required to handle serials. Serials' unique nature requires different treatment than other formats. Better coordination, cooperation, and communications are fostered. Duplicate record keeping is avoided.

Most serials organization has been based on the idiosyncratic requirements of particular libraries rather than long-range planning theory, research is lacking about the two forms' relative effectiveness and it is uncertain which model will work best for future technological developments.

Some important issues like-introduction; cataloguing of serials; CONSER project of the serials; role of standards in serials automation; serials librarian; serials education; budgeting of serials etc. are given exhaustive treatment in this book.

Staff management is important as mostly half of the library's budget is spent on staff salaries. So it is important to analyses and evaluate existing jobs and staffing structure and modify them in relation to changing needs such as automation, taking account of the balance between supply and demand for library and information workers.

It is vital to have a well thought out recruitment strategy using staffs who are skilled in drawing up personnel specifications and following and other selection methods.

Some pertinent issues are elaborately discussed in this book, prominent among these being-introduction; workforce planning; job analysis; staff recruitment; staff appraisal; staff training; staff supervision etc.

Job training is practised universally in all organisations either consciously or unconsciously. There tends to be an easy assumption that satisfactory job training exists because everyone who remains in post in a library must of necessity have learnt his job to at least minimum standards.

Training improves individual performance in the directions desired by the library manager. If it is done well, staff will also be developed personally.

Here in this book some important issues pertaining to staff training and development are dealt elaborately. Major themes given competent treatment in this book are-library training, library leadership; staff training; job satisfaction; staff organisation; staff supervision; effective librarianship etc.

Online catalogs can be easily accessed from outside the library, by using remote terminals and microcomputers with communications capabilities. They may provide more current information than other forms, and can more readily include more materials; thereby providing better coverage using them for subject retrieval may be more effective. In the case of subject retrieval, online catalogs allow users of libraries to find the information that they want not only more quickly, but also more fully and more accurately, and without the need for the user to be technically skilled. The introduction of online catalogs is changing the picture of subject access considerably by making it possible to search for precise topics through the use of keywords, subject headings, and Boolean operators.

The major topics discussed in this book are: introduction; keyword subject access; subject indexing; user system interaction; subject heading systems; language in information retrieval; database; Dewey decimal and library of Congress Classification; evaluation of subject retrieval etc. A veritable mine of information, certainly, this will prove vade mecum to all concerned.