This manual is meant to be one of the first steps in the renaissance of the Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry and its computer-readable counterparts, the Beilstein Databases of factual and structural data. The enormous work of the staff of the Beilstein Institute has produced, for over 100 years, a very valuable and unique scientific resource. We are pleased to be able to be involved in making this large volume of evaluated scientific data more readily available to the worldwide chemical community. We would like to thank the many staff members of the Beilstein Institute for their help in providing us with the necessary information, facts, and corrections to this manual. In particular we would like to thank Clemens Jochum, Reiner Luckenbach, Sandy Lawson, Laszlo Domokos, Martin Hicks, Steve Welford, and especially Christiane Schaum and Gabriele IIchmann of the Beilstein Institute. We are also indebted to many teachers of organic chemistry and colleagues in the field of computers and chemical information, including Fausto Ramirez, Ed Kosower, Chuck Hammer, Richard Feldmann, and Chezi Wolman.