Helen Cooke, GlaxoSmithKline, 709 Swedeland Road, King of Prussia, PA 19406

Starting in the late 19th century, J. Chem. Soc. and J. Soc. Chem. Ind. pubished abstracts of patents and articles from other journals in addition to original work. These abstracts were teh predecessors of British Chemical Abstracts (BCA) which was launched in 1926 as a separate publication under the direction of the Bureau of Abstracts, a joint committtee of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) and the Chemical Society (CS). Prior to the start of Chemical Abstracts (CA) in 1907, the ACS unsuccessfully attempted to collaborate with the sCI and cS to produce a single abstracts journal. The increasing inportance of CA and the impact of outside influences, such as the war, led to the demise of BCA in 1953. The successes, struggles and dilemmas experienced by the publishers of BCA will be explored, as well as its organisation, indexing and coverage. BCA users' experiences will also be presented. *This work represents the author's personal thoughts and does not represent the views of GlaxoSmithKline.