A comprehensive work covering the about 100,000 species of Coleoptera known to occur in the Palaearctic Region. The complete work is planned for 8 volumes that will be published in intervals of about 18 months. The information provided for each species will be the following: • Primary taxonomic information of all available names in the genus and species levels published by the end of 1999. • The taxonomic information below subfamily will be organized alphabetically. • The type species of genera and subgenera, incl. synonyms, are given. • The area covered also includes the Arabian Peninsula, Himalayas and China. • The distributional data of species and subspecies is given per country. • Detailed distributional information for strict endemics is given. • Introduced species are indicated. The catalogue is a collective work of about one hundred coleopterists from Europe, Japan, America and Australia.