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McGraw-Hill Higher Education Offers Digital Textbooks
through NetLibrary's MetaText
Digital Textbooks Integrated with PageOut® Course Management Tool
New York, N.Y., April 2,
2001 — McGraw-Hill
Higher Education, a unit of McGraw-Hill Education and a leading provider of
electronic learning solutions for the college market, today announced it has
formed an alliance with MetaText, NetLibrary's digital textbook division, to
develop electronic versions of its college textbooks that will be ready for
review this spring.
In a move designed to
enhance student learning and help professors manage their courses, McGraw-Hill
for the first time will make its digital-textbooks available through classroom
websites created with its PageOut® course management software, which is free to
professors who use McGraw-Hill materials. With over 50,000 registered
professors, PageOut® continues to be the most user-friendly course management
tool available. Through PageOut® , a student can view a professor's
instructions and notes, take tests prepared by instructors, and directly link
to a MetaText e-textbook and other electronic tools, such as McGraw-Hill's
Online Learning Centers, exercises and links to related websites.
MetaText will convert about
30 McGraw-Hill market-leading textbooks, covering a variety of subject areas
including Economics, Accounting, Communications, English, Biology, Anatomy
& Physiology and GeoScience. MetaText's production staff will digitize
McGraw-Hill textbooks and make them available throughout the spring and summer
for review and adoption by instructors at colleges and universities throughout
the North America. Instructors will be able to adopt MetaText editions directly
through McGraw-Hill Higher Education sales representatives and begin using the
McGraw-Hill Metatext editions in the fall semester of 2001.
This alliance is part of
McGraw-Hill Education's strategy to combine its superior content with the best
of technology to enhance learning at all levels any time, any place, in any
format and on any device. It also adds to the over 400 e-textbooks McGraw-Hill
offers through Primis Online and alliances with other e-textbook developers.
"This alliance
supports our goal to provide cutting edge technology-based learning solutions
to the higher education marketplace," said Ed Stanford, president of
McGraw-Hill Higher Education. "Providing our e-textbooks through PageOut®
will make learning more efficient and effective by linking all learning
materials in one online environment and enhancing communication between
professors and students."
"We are delighted to
be working with McGraw-Hill to develop MetaText editions of many of their
leading textbooks", said Herb Hilderley, senior vice-president at
NetLibrary. "Having the McGraw-Hill sales and marketing organization
promoting these e-text editions will assure that professors and students will
quickly become aware of the many advantages they offer for teaching and
learning."
MetaText editions contain
all essential components of a textbook, including text and most photographs,
charts, and graphics. MetaText editions organize text into conceptual units
rather than arbitrary page breaks. The MetaText platform features a variety of
tools to benefit both instructors and students. With MetaText, professors can
annotate text, and make class announcements that are instantly viewable by
students. Students using MetaText can take advantage of a host of features to
search, navigate, annotate, highlight, and bookmark their online texts.
Students purchasing a MetaText e-textbook will have their own unique home pages
that serve as a portal to all of their MetaText resources associated with the
course, including the text, and additional reading materials. Communication
tools built into the MetaText platform facilitate instructor-student and
instructor-class feedback.
McGraw-Hill Education is a unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global
information services provider meeting worldwide needs in financial services,
education and business-to-business information through leading brands such as
Standard & Poor's and BusinessWeek. Founded in 1888, the Corporation has
more than 300 offices in 32 countries. Sales in 2000 were $4.3 billion.
Additional information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com.
MetaText was founded in 1998 to help publishers, instructors, and students
harness the power of the information age. MetaText creates Web-based digital
textbooks that provide instructors and students with a full range of
interactive learning tools. Since its acquisition by NetLibrary in March 2000,
MetaText has utilized NetLibrary's industry leading conversion and technology
development capabilities to rapidly expand its digital textbook initiatives.
For more information, go to www.MetaText.com.
NetLibrary is the leading provider of eBooks and Internet-based content
management services. Hundreds of publishers of academic, professional, and
scholarly books have adopted NetLibrary's digital rights management
infrastructure. NetLibrary develops, archives, hosts, and securely distributes
eBooks through a variety of channels, including academic, corporate, public,
and school libraries. NetLibrary eBooks are full-text searchable and available
for use on personal computers in online and offline formats.
Contact:
April Hattori
Vice President, Communications
McGraw-Hill Education
(212) 904-2078
april_hattori@mcgraw-hill.com
Becky Mazzanobile
Director, Product Management
McGraw-Hill Higher Education
(212) 904-3972
becky_mazzanobile@mcgraw-hill.com
Leslie Kemp,
Director of Marketing
(303) 415-2548
lkemp@netlibrary.com
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