American Library Association Chooses ebrary's Platform to Deliver American Libraries Magazine Online.

Business Editors/Education Writers

ALA Midwinter 

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 9, 2004

American Library Association (ALA) members will soon have online access to a fully searchable, digital database of American Libraries (www.ala.org/alonline/), ALA's leading magazine for the library profession, distributed monthly to more than 64,000 individuals worldwide.

ALA today announced that it has chosen ebrary(R) (www.ebrary.com), a leading provider of information distribution and retrieval services, to host, distribute and archive digital editions via its unique platform, which transforms printed pages into a dynamic database. The new service will be delivered using the familiar, easy-to-use ebrary interface used by hundreds of libraries that subscribe to ebrary's aggregated book databases and other database products.

ALA and ebrary will be demonstrating the new service at ALA Midwinter, January 9-12, 2004, in San Diego, Calif. Visit American Libraries booth #922 or ebrary booth #861 for details.

"We expect to be up and running by March, with access going back to 1998," said American Libraries Editor and Publisher Leonard Kniffel. "ALA members will be able to access the archive with their membership numbers to perform full-text searches within the magazine and across publications, use ebrary InfoTools(TM) for research with word-level interaction, and create personal bookshelves that save links to bookmarks, highlighted text, and annotations."

"From an organizational perspective, ebrary's PDF-based platform allows us to cost effectively and efficiently extend the reach of American Libraries while building and maintaining our unique look and content," Kniffel added. "We are very pleased to partner with ebrary as it will add enormous value to membership in ALA."

"ALA is the oldest and largest library association in the world, whose mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information," said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. "We are very proud to be able to help ALA achieve this mission through the digital distribution of American Libraries. Additionally, we are extremely excited to demonstrate the flexibility and scalability of our database technology, which is applicable to journals, books, magazines, maps, reports and other document types."

About ALA

The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest, and most influential library association in the world with over 64,000 members. Members are primarily librarians but also trustees, publishers and other library supporters. The association represents all types of libraries -- public, school, academic, state and special libraries serving persons in government, commerce, armed services, hospitals, prisons and other institutions. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information.

About ebrary

ebrary is a leading provider of information distribution and retrieval services. The company has developed a powerful system that cost-effectively and -efficiently creates highly interactive, online content databases, from which it produces numerous market-specific applications. ebrary was named to the 2003 eContent 100 list of leading companies in the digital content industry.

ebrary licenses its unique database technology to organizations that seek to reduce costs, increase revenues and improve efficiency by securely distributing their own content over the Internet. ebrary also uses its own technology to create databases containing content from leading publishers, which it then licenses to libraries and other institutions worldwide. ebrary currently offers over 35,000 full-text books, sheet music titles, maps, reports and other authoritative documents from more than 175 leading academic, trade and professional publishers. The company also operates a consumer-facing site- ebrary Discover -- designed for individuals that do not have access to its database collections through their library. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. with offices in New York, ebrary is privately held and funded by Random House Ventures LLC, Pearson plc and The McGraw-Hill Companies.