Canadian National Site-Licensing Project Signs Agreement with IDEAL to Deliver Online Access Across Canada.

Business Editors

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 2001

The Canadian National Site Licensing Project (CNSLP) has signed an historic pan-Canadian license for IDEAL(R), the pioneering online resource library at http://www.idealibrary.com. This agreement grants approximately 650,000 academic researchers and students in 64 institutions across Canada access to all 177 Academic Press (AP) journals published electronically on IDEAL.

This is the first national license delivering IDEAL to academic end-users in North America. By uniting Canadian universities in one license (including 21 universities previously licensed to access IDEAL), CNSLP has surmounted budgetary challenges at some universities and achieved nationwide access to IDEAL's collection of Academic Press journals.

CNSLP Executive Director Deb deBruijn stated: "The CNSLP is delighted to announce the inclusion of IDEAL in our first major licensing round. We're also licensing journals from six other publishers: the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Chemical Society, as well as the Institute of Physics, ISI Web of Science, and Springer Verlag.

"Inclusion of the IDEAL library recognizes the innovative leadership at Harcourt and the outstanding value of IDEAL's content and its electronic features. This IDEAL license has been signed through a collaborative effort on the part of Canada's higher-education institutions that is unprecedented in scope and impact. We look forward to benefiting greatly from our investment in IDEAL."

University of Ottawa's Vice-Rector, Research, Dr. Howard Alper, who heads the CNSLP Steering Committee, commented: "To remain internationally competitive, Canadian researchers require speedy and convenient access to the world's primary scholarly literature. National site-licensing allows us to provide university researchers and graduate students across Canada with electronic access to the leading journals in their fields. Our new IDEAL license moves us along strongly towards CNSLP's goals."

Administered at the University of Ottawa, the CNSLP is an ongoing initiative encompassing a far-flung and diverse group of universities located throughout Canada's ten provinces. This initiative seeks to secure licenses for electronic journals primarily in science, engineering, health and the environment, and to provide academic researchers at the participating institutions with online access to such journals.

Now in its second year, the CNSLP is funded through support provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, member universities and other revenue partners such as provincial governments. The value of the three-year initiative is $50 million in Canadian dollars. More information about the CNSLP -- including a list of the 64 participating institutions -- appears at http://wwww.uottawa.ca/library/cnslp/.

IDEAL, the International Digital Electronic Access Library, is licensed in 32 countries by more than 2,000 academic institutions and industrial and pharmaceutical companies. Over 10 million users worldwide are authorized to use IDEAL.

In addition to Academic Press journals, IDEAL offers 143 currently published journals from Harcourt Health Sciences -- encompassing Bailliere Tindall, Churchill Livingstone, Mosby, and W.B. Saunders imprints. IDEAL includes more than 200,000 journal articles.

IDEAL further delivers access to a growing and diverse body of other electronic research products such as IDEALReferenceWorks encyclopedias and informatics databases from SciVision.

IDEAL is the online library of the Harcourt Worldwide STM Group. Academic Press is a Harcourt Science and Technology Company and part of Harcourt's Worldwide Scientific, Technical and Medical Group. Academic Press is an international multiple-media publisher of high-quality journals, book serials, major reference works, databases, textbooks and monographs.

Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Harcourt, Inc., Harcourt General (NYSE: H) is a leading global multiple-media publisher, providing products and services to classroom, corporate, research, medical and consumer markets.

IDEAL is a registered trademark of Harcourt, Inc. More information about IDEAL appears at http://www.idealibrary.com.