From your 1997-98 OCLC Users' Council Delegates:
   Bernard Strong Marcia Talley
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   ph: 202-287-9463 ph: 410-293-6905


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Andrea Keyhani +1-614-764-6474
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Nita Dean +1-614-761-5002
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KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS PARTNERS WITH OCLC

DUBLIN, Ohio, Aug. 25, 1997--Kluwer Academic Publishers has agreed to make
its journals available electronically through the OCLC FirstSearch
Electronic Collections Online service.

Initially the full text of 116 journals in applied, natural and social
sciences will be offered through Electronic Collections Online. The
remaining 200 journals will be made available as Kluwer Academic Publishers
converts them to electronic form.

"We believe that our cooperation with OCLC is of strategic importance
because of the one-stop-shopping element Electronic Collections Online is
providing to our customers," said Jan Hattink, director of Marketing and
Library Relations, Kluwer Academic Publishers. "Also, OCLC is the first to
address the archiving problem, giving customers perpetual access to material
once subscribed to."

"We are quite pleased that Kluwer will be making their journals available
through our Electronic Collections Online service," said John Barnes,
director, OCLC Electronic Journals. "Kluwer has long been a leader in the
publishing community and is actively embracing the move to electronic
distribution. Their journals cover a wide variety of subject disciplines
and are an integral part of the collections of libraries worldwide."

As the journals become available electronically, institutions using
Electronic Collections Online will have access to the electronic version of
the print journals they subscribe to from Kluwer Academic Publishers.
 Because 1998 will be regarded as a transition year, there will be no
additional charge for the electronic content up to the end of 1998.

Kluwer Academic Publishers is the 18th publisher to provide journals
electronically through Electronic Collections Online, which was introduced
in June. Electronic Collections Online enables libraries to subscribe to
large collections of academic journals, from many publishers, and access
them remotely through a single World Wide Web interface that supports
cross-journal searching and extensive browsing. More than 650 journals are
under contract to be added to Electronic Collections Online. Additional
content agreements are expected in the coming months.

Libraries using Electronic Collections Online subscribe to journals directly
with publishers or subscription agents and access them remotely through the
World Wide Web at OCLC's headquarters in Dublin, Ohio.

End users of Electronic Collections Online can search, browse and display
article citations for all journals available through the service and display
abstracts or complete articles for journals their library subscribes to.
 Users can browse lists of journals, selected issues or a selected topic
area.

Electronic Collections Online combines the cost benefits associated with
remote access to data with the advantages of local collection management,
reducing information costs for libraries by centralizing storage and access
and enabling libraries to share the cost of loading, archiving and providing
access to their electronic journal collections. In addition, Electronic
Collections Online offers libraries a number of value-added features,
including print-quality article representation, usage statistics, technology
migration, and technical and product support.

Kluwer Academic Publishers is an international scientific publisher with
offices in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, and Boston, Massachusetts. Its list
comprises approximately 320 research journals in natural and applied
sciences, medicine, social sciences and the humanities. On average, 600
books are published each year. Kluwer Academic publishers is part of the
Wolters Kluwer Company [www.wkap.com or www.wkap.nl].

OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer
library service and research organization whose computer network and
services link more than 25,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories
[www.oclc.org]. (ND/GP)
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