This secondary information service, initiated in the early 1970s, arose out of a need for rapid dissemination of new information on environmental issues. Its scope is international, and its style of organization lends itself to use by undergraduates, practitioners, and concerned laypersons as well as sophisticated searchers. An easy-to-use natural language index, plus listings of full tables of contents of more than 350 scientific, technical, and socially-oriented journals, combine to make this a particularly accessible reference tool. The role of such secondary reference serials in the sciences is increasingly significant in light of escalating periodicals prices and frozen or reduced library budgets.