ABSTRACT
2 Traditionally, union catalogues of serials have performed identification and location functions, to facilitate interlending and collection-rationalization processes.1 As their number and variety have increased, they have come to serve other important functions. Technological developments, particularly in telecommunications, allowing correlation and duplication of data bases with improved access and response, are extending traditional functions, which nonetheless remain valid even in an era of transition. It is anticipated that union catalogues of serials will undergird the electronic location and delivery systems of the future, as they have supported simpler structures in the past, and will continue to respond to the serials information requirements of librarians, archivists, documentalists, serials suppliers, students, scholars and researchers in all fields of knowledge.
