ABSTRACT
In the early 1920s there was informal and then formal discussion among biologists for several years about the need for a comprehensive abstracting journal for all of biology. The Society of American Bacteriologists had estabished Abstracts of Bacteriology in 1916 (publication started in 1917), and an organizing group of editors of American botanical journals had begun publication of Botanical Abstracts in 1918 (both were instigated mainly as replacements for the German abstracting journals that had been cut off by World War I). Even this early in the century, however, biologists from every subdiscipline felt that the literature was growing rapidly and becoming unmanageable. In 1923 the Union of American Biological Societies was inaugurated with the purpose of establishing a biological abstracting journal. This purpose became a reality when the Rockefeller Foundation committed an initial ten-year grant to defray editorial expenses for this endeavor. On December 31,1925, Abstracts of Bacteriology and Botanical Abstracts were merged into Biological Abstracts.
