Abstract A total of 64 references to papers, books and conference proceedings on the subject of software reliability have been selected. Each of these references is provided with an annotation consisting of a paragraph of commentary. Sections of the bibliography are devoted to requirements definition, programming methodology, certification, fault‐tolerance and reliability modelling.

Backward error recovery (that is, resetting an erroneous state of a system to a previous error-free state) is an important general technique for recovery from faults in a system, especially those faults which were not foreseen. However, the provision of backward error recovery can be complex, particularly if the implementation of the system is "multilever" and recovery is to be provided at a number of these levels. This paper discusses two distinct categories of multilevel system, and then examines in detail the issues involved in providing backward error recovery in both types of system.