By way of introduction I would like to give a short presentation on the Department of Periodicals at the Bibliotheque Nationale to which I belong. The Department was set up in 1942, but not opened to the public till 1945. The Department of Periodicals, according to the law on legal deposit, receives, registers, catalogues, preserves and gives access to all periodicals published in France. Of course, legal deposit of periodicals was made to the Bibliotheque Nationale before 1945, but until then the Department of Printed Matter, together with the General Office of Legal Deposit, did the processing. The Department of Periodicals has a staff of 135 permanent agents and 13 temporary agents. Miss Le Nan, chief librarian, is head of the Department. About 6000 issues of periodicals arrive &$y at the library (the law stipulates the deposit of four copies from the publisher and one or two copies from the printer). The holdings are kept either in Paris or Versailles. In Paris, the Department is located in the Richelieu building as well as in the Vivienne building (opened in December 1985). The Office of legal deposit of periodicals and the different offices of computerized cataloguing (Bibliographie de la France, Supplement I: Serials; CNEPS (National Centre of Registration of Serials) are situated at the Vivienne site; reading room, stacks, offices of retrospective cataloguing and of foreign periodicals, as well as the administration, are situated at the Richelieu site. In Paris, the staff includes 113 permanent agents and 10 temporary agents. The stacks cover about 14000 linear metres with a yearly increase of about 380 m. The Parisian stacks contain all the holdings of national newspapers and of important reference periodicals, French or foreign. The Annex in Versailles keeps and gives access to almost 80% of all periodicals received by the library, registration having been made previously in the Paris offices. The Annex comprises three lo-storey buildings of which the first was opened in 1934, the second in 1962 and the last one in 1970. Mrs Olivier is head of the Annex that has a staff