EBRARY OFFERS SIMULTANEOUS/MULTI-USER ACCESS TO CONTENT.

R.R. Bowker(R), New Providence, N.J., a leading provider of bibliographic information in North America, has extended its licensing agreement with ebrary, a provider of information distribution and retrieval services, in which Bowker will be a preferred reseller of the ebrary research database to public libraries nationwide.

The ebrary Public Library Complete research database is accessible from all three of Bowker's principal Web-based information services: booksinprint.com, patronbooksinprint.com and globalbooksinprint.com. The database empowers public libraries to provide simultaneous, multi-user access to a searchable collection of full text for more than 5,800 books and other authoritative content gathered from the world's leading publishers.

"With this integrated public library database, patrons at public libraries that subscribe to booksinprint.com can view the full text of titles available by simply clicking on the link and opening the text with ebrary's PDF-based technology," said Boe Horton, vice president and general manager of the library division at New Providence-based R.R. Bowker. "They can also go on to conduct extensive research by searching keywords or phrases through dictionaries, encyclopedias, Web sites and other electronic reference materials."

According to Horton, the Public Library Complete database can be easily integrated with ILS systems in place at most public libraries. Moreover, the system is very user friendly, offering researchers helpful tools such as the ability to highlight text, make annotations alongside a document, and save them on a personal electronic bookshelf for future reference.

"This is an important initiative and is part of our company's strategic mission to encourage patrons to go back to their public libraries in order to get the appropriate professional help they need to conduct thorough research," said Horton.

According to Kevin Cronin, vice president of sales at Palo Alto, Calif.-based ebrary, the newly extended partnership with Bowker is a reflection of how successful the two companies have been working together since they first joined forces 18 months ago.

"Bowker's extraordinary reputation in the library market and their 130-plus years of experience with delivering bibliographic products makes them an ideal partner to resell our public library database to public libraries," said Cronin. "By working together, we will be able to help public library professionals offer their patrons access to a fully searchable online database of thousands of full-text books as well as to a wide variety of powerful electronic research tools."

Founded in 1872, R.R. Bowker is North America's leading provider of bibliographic information, and is also the official agency for assigning ISBNs in the United States. The company's flagship product, Books In Print(R), is available on the Internet at www.booksinprint.com, on CD-ROM, and in hardbound print format.

For more information, visit http:www.bowker.com or call 888/269-5372 or 661/297-5292.

ebrary is a leading provider of information distribution and retrieval services. The company has developed a powerful system that cost-effectively and cost-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. For more information, call 650/726-7856.