Bacteria have a daily impact upon human activities. The emergence of the new biotechnology has increased the awareness by scientists of the long recognised need for reliable, permanent, culture collections which safe-keep viable exemplars of the many known bacterial species and varieties. There is now an increased awareness too that what is in fact conserved in service collections represents but a small part of the bacterial gene pool. Outside the recognised and long-established ‘service-supply culture collections’ there are many other centres whose holdings of cultures add to overall microbial, living resources available to scientists. There is an emphasis in this book on what defines a useful microbial resource: the cultures themselves, their documentation, and increasingly wide knowledge of their existence.

Today we are also in an age of developing information technology. Progress here enhances the existing resources, making it increasingly easy for individual scientists to access the great body of technical information associated with holdings of cultures. An additional benefit from the use of information technology to improve wider access to known information is to bring more clearly into focus gaps in our present knowledge and shortfalls in the presently conserved ranges of organisms available.

This book is an introduction to these resources, to culture collections, their holdings, and to the ways and means scientists responsible for their upkeep are exploiting information technology in the service of science. Hopefully, it will act as a stimulus to both research scientists and those engaged even in focused applied work. Reality dictates that often the distinction between research and applied science is blurred, but the extremes of each have need for authenticated, documented exemplars of the known microbial gene pool.