NetLibrary to Offer Seamless eTextbook Platform
Through MetaText Acquisition and Creation of New Electronic Textbook Group, NetLibrary
to Offer eTextbook Platform to Publishers, Educators, and Students
BOULDER, Colo. – April 25, 2000 – NetLibrary™, a leading
provider of eBooks and Internet-based content/collection management services for
publishers, today announced the creation of a new group to provide electronic textbooks
and networked educational content and services to faculty and students in higher
education.
Through its recent acquisition of Orlando, Fla.-based MetaText Inc., NetLibrary is
now capable of furnishing a Web-based solution for the management and distribution
of eTextbooks to the education community. The MetaText product group, working closely
with textbook publishers, intends to introduce an integrated textbook platform to
educators and students in the fall of 2000 at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
MetaText Inc. was founded in 1998 by David Lindrum, then a college instructor.
Lindrum and Herb Hilderley, MetaText CEO and a 25-year veteran of the textbook
publishing industry, have joined NetLibrary as part of the new MetaText product group.
"The acquisition of the MetaText platform and the alliances we have formed with
other distribution and technology firms in recent months enable us to present an
end-to-end solution to the education community," said NetLibrary Executive Vice
President David Melancon.
NetLibrary's eTextbook platform will benefit textbook publishers, professors and students.
For publishers: NetLibrary will provide barrier-free entry into the electronic
textbook market. Publisher expenses can be reduced by offering digital desk copies of
published texts, digital ancillaries to paper texts and by replacing text-specific Web
sites. NetLibrary's Electronic Textbook Group also will provide editorial services,
helping publishers offer enhanced multimedia learning materials.
For professors: The eTextbook platform will offer a variety of tools for
customizing text and communicating with students. Syllabus creation tools will allow
content to be reordered and interwoven with other digital resources. Professors will be
able to provide annotations to the eTextbooks, create margin notes in student copies,
and highlight key concepts and link to other Internet resources. Other tools will be
provided for tracking student progress, making class announcements and building a course
syllabus without requiring knowledge of HTML. The eTextbook platform will be able to be
used with other course management systems. In addition, professors will be able to create
links to other learning tools outside of the MetaText platform to enhance learning,
including other campus resources and local school library holdings of eBooks from NetLibrary.
The NetLibrary collection currently includes more than 18,000 academic and reference titles.
For students: The eTextbook platform will provide a single access point on the
Internet to all course materials, including syllabi, eTextbooks and additional materials
added by an educator. The eTextbook platform enables the inclusion of other electronic
course materials, including glossaries, dictionaries, and reference resources. Full-text
searches will be able to be performed simultaneously on all course materials, and links
from MetaText will point students to relevant Web sites.
NetLibrary (www.NetLibrary.com) is a leading provider of eBooks and Internet-based
content/collection management services. NetLibrary has established relationships with
more than 200 publishers of trade, academic, reference, and scholarly books, and has
created digital versions of more than 18,000 titles. NetLibrary hosts and manages eBook
collections for numerous public, academic, corporate, and special libraries around the world.
The company also sells eBooks directly to consumers at the NetLibrary website. With
NetLibrary, consumers can choose between PC-based eBooks for reading online or offline,
and eBooks for portable reading on a variety of handheld computers, such as those running
the Palm and Windows CE operating systems.
Contact:
Brian Bell
NetLibrary
(303) 381-8703
bbell@NetLibrary.com
Heather Robinson
GCI Group
(415) 974-7265
hrobinson@gcigroup.com
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