Filling an obvious gap in the scientific literature, this practice-oriented reference is the first to tie together the working knowledge of largescreening centers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological field. It spans the entire fi eld of this emerging discipline, from compoundacquisition to collection optimization for specific purposes, to technology and quality control. In so doing, it applies two decades of expertise gathered by several large pharmaceutical companies to current and future challenges in high-throughput screening. With its treatment of libraries of small molecules as well as biobanks containing biomolecules, microorganisms and tissue samples, this reference is universally applicable for any molecular scientist involved in a large screening program.