The purpose of the Catalogue of Artificial Intelligence Techniques is to promote interaction between members of the AI community. It does this by announcing the existence of AI techniques, and acting as a pointer into the literature. Thus the AI community will have access to a common, extensional definition of the field, which will promote a common terminology, discourage the reinvention of wheels, and act as a clearing house for ideas and algorithms. The catalogue is a reference work providing a quick guide to the AI techniques available for different jobs. It is not intended to be a textbook like the Artificial Intelligence Handbook. Intentionally, it only provides a brief description of each technique, with no extended discussion of its historical origin or how it has been used in particular AI programs. The original version of the catalogue was hastily built in 1983 as part of the UK SERC-DoI, IKBS Architecture Study. It was adopted by the UK Alvey Programme and, during the life of the programme, was both circulated to Alvey grant holders in hard copy form and maintained as an on-line document. A version designed for the international community was published as a paperback by Springer-Verlag. All these versions have undergone constant revision and refinement. Springer-Verlag has agreed to reprint the catalogue at frequent intervals in order to keep it up to date and this is the third edition of their paperback version.

Associate editor: Alan Smaill