Ontario Council of University Libraries / Scholars Portal Service Chooses ebrary's Platform to Locally Host over 100,000 e-books

Business Wire, Jan 10, 2008

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Please replace the release with the following corrected version due to multiple revisions.

The corrected release reads:

ONTARIO COUNCIL OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES / SCHOLARS PORTAL SERVICE CHOOSES EBRARY'S PLATFORM TO LOCALLY HOST OVER 100,000 E-BOOKS

ebrary[R], a leading provider of e-content technology and services, today announced that the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) has chosen its technology to distribute and archive over 100,000 e-books as part of the Scholars Portal services. Scholars Portal offers all 20 Ontario universities a growing collection of scholarly content including nearly 13 million journal articles and 200 abstract and index databases.

"OCUL chose ebrary's platform technology for a number of reasons," said Peter Clinton, University of Toronto Library's Director of Information Technology Services. "ebrary's technology platform will allow us to seamlessly integrate e-books not only with other Scholars Portal digital collections and resources but also into the learning management systems used by Ontario's 20 universities. It is easy-to-use, affordable, and offers the most compelling technology for supporting research."

"Our partnership with OCUL is an enormous validation of the development investments we have been making over the years in terms of our electronic publishing platform as a valuable solution for organizations that need to distribute their own digitized materials online," said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. "We are thrilled that such esteemed organizations in the academic community as the University of Toronto and the other OCUL members have selected ebrary to address their electronic publishing needs."

Under terms of the agreement, OCUL will be one of the first customers for ebrary's standalone licensed product - code named ISIS - that is hosted on the customers' servers, behind their firewalls. ISIS is currently under its last phase of development and is slated to ship in 2008. In addition to providing customers with complete control over their own digitized collections, ISIS will offer the same rich functionality as ebrary's current hosted solution, as follows:

* Full text searching and indexing

* Easy PDF submission

* ebrary InfoTools[TM] provide contextual linking across multiple online resources

* The ebrary Reader[TM] streams pages online, eliminating cumbersome document downloads

* Personal bookshelves

* Highlighting and annotating

* Multiple search options

* Copying and printing with an automatic citation and URL hyperlink back to the source

* Reporting tools and usage statistics

Additional ebrary Platform Announcements

In separate press releases issued today, ebrary announced that Brigham Young University and Informa Healthcare have also licensed its platform to distribute their own digitized materials online. The press releases are available at http://www.ebrary.com/corp/newsReleases.jsp.> About Ontario Council of University Libraries (www.ocul.on.ca)

OCUL is a consortium of twenty university libraries in the province of Ontario. The member libraries cooperate to enhance information services through resource sharing, collective purchasing, document delivery and many other similar activities. OCUL's vision is to be a recognized leader in provincial, national and international post-secondary communities for the collaborative development and delivery of outstanding and innovative library services. Established in 1967, OCUL's twenty member institutions continue to enhance their libraries through activities such as the joint creation of the digital library Scholars Portal.

About Scholars Portal (www.scholarsportal.info)

Scholars Portal is an OCUL initiative that provides the infrastructure to all Ontario universities to support electronic access to major research materials. The Scholars Portal was established in 2002 as a gateway to a wide range of information and services for all faculty and students in the Ontario universities. The specific objectives are to: provide long- term secure archiving of resources to ensure continued availability, ensure rapid and reliable response time for information services and resources, provide an environment that fosters additional innovation in response to the needs of the users, and create a network of intellectual resources by linking ideas, materials, documents and resources.

About University of Toronto Libraries (www.library.utoronto.ca)

The University of Toronto Library system is the largest academic library in Canada and is ranked in the top five among research libraries in North America. The system consists of over 30 libraries serving over 60,000 students and staff. This array of college libraries, special collections, and information centres covers subject areas from architecture to zoology. In addition to more than 16 million print holdings, the library system offers access to one of the largest collections of online library materials in North America.

About ebrary (www.ebrary.com)

ebrary[R] is a leading provider of e-content services and technology. The company helps libraries, publishers, and other organizations disseminate valuable information to end users, while improving their research and document interaction.