This guide summarizes advances in techniques of automatic indexing and abstracting, and the results of their application. It also places the techniques in the context of the study of text, manual indexing and abstracting, and the use of the indexing descriptions and abstracts in systems that select documents or information from large collections. Important sections of the book consider the development of new techniques for indexing and abstracting. The techniques involve the following: using text grammars, learning of the themes of the texts including the identification of representative sentences or paragraphs by means of adequate cluster algorithms, and learning of classification patterns of texts. In addition, the book is an attempt to illuminate new avenues for future research.