Swets Blackwell mediates more e-licensing deals for HEAL-Link

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 15:53:50 +0200
From: Sarah Kellman <skellman@swets.nl>
To: 'Editors' <press@nl.swetsblackwell.com>
Subject: Swets Blackwell mediates more e-licensing deals for HEAL-Link

June 20, 2003
Lisse, the Netherlands

Swets Blackwell mediates more e-licensing deals for HEAL-Link

Swets Blackwell announced today that it has brokered a further round of
deals to migrate all print subscriptions ordered by the Greek consortium
HEAL-Link (Hellenic Academic Libraries Link) to electronic only. In so
doing, HEAL-Link became the first national consortium in Europe to close
unilateral agreements on behalf of all its members. HEAL-Link's 57 members
are comprised of all academic and research institutions across Greece, as
well as the University of Cyprus.

HEAL-Link members will have full text access to over 7,500 journal titles
available from 14 publishers, who now include American Chemical Society,
American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Association for
Computing Machinery, Blackwell Publishing, Institute of Physics, John
Wiley, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Oxford University Press and Taylor &
Francis. Among the other STM publishers already participating with
HEAL-Link, and negotiated with the aid of Swets Blackwell, are Elsevier,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, MCB and Springer. In addition, HEAL-Link has
agreements for OCLC FirstSearch and Wilson OmniFile Full Text Mega.

Dr. Vassilios Papazoglou, Director General of HEAL-Link and Professor at
the National Technical University of Athens, commented: "We think that
HEAL-Link has made significant progress in its five years of existence,
despite the many difficulties any consortium faces at the beginning. Swets
Blackwell has played a crucial role in this progress, especially during
the initial stages of negotiations with publishers regarding electronic
journal access.  We look forward to continuing our fruitful cooperation
with the company in the future as the international electronic publishing
scene continues to unfold, with yet unknown consequences for academic
libraries."

Claudine Xenidou-Dervos, Chairman of the Electronic Sources Committee of
HEAL-Link and Resource Sharing Coordinator/Site-Librarian at Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, added: "Over the past four years, Greek
academic and research institutions increased manifold their access to
scientific literature and thus increased their competitiveness in the
information world. HEAL-Link, after starting with print plus electronic
and a few big deals, moved within three years to e-only with a number of
major publishers. Swets Blackwell's help has been instrumental throughout
this process."

Paul Harwood, Swets Blackwell UK's Managing Director and Global Consortia
Team Leader, stated: "Combining the vision and drive of HEAL-Link with the
expert knowledge and administrative skills of Swets Blackwell has proved
to be a compelling force and has clearly put HEAL-Link in the premier
league as far as consortia licensing is concerned. It has been a real
pleasure to work with them and the participating publishers during the
last few years and we look forward to further collaboration in the years
ahead."

About HEAL-Link

HEAL-Link is comprised of the 34 Higher Education Institutions of Greece
(20 Universities and 14 Technological Education Institutes), the
University of Cyprus, the Academy of Athens, the National Library of
Greece, the Pedagogical Institute and the 19 Research Institutes of the
General Secretariat for Research and Development. Among the many purposes
of HEAL-Link are the creation of common subscriptions to electronic
resources and information services, as well as licenses for remote access
to electronic resources and information services, including electronic
scientific journals.  HEAL-Link is a member of the International Coalition
of Libraries Consortia. Learn more at www.heal-link.gr
<http://www.heal-link.gr>

About Swets Blackwell

Swets Blackwell (www.swetsblackwell.com <http://www.swetsblackwell.com> )
is the world's largest subscription agent, with offices in 22 countries on
six continents. It provides a wide variety of subscription management
solutions for academic, scientific, technical, medical, corporate and
government libraries and information centers worldwide. Founded in 1901,
Swets Blackwell counts among its 60,000 customers many of the world's
major research libraries and over 30% of the Fortune 500 companies. In
recognition of the superior service it provides, Swets Blackwell was
granted ISO 9001:2000 accreditation.

# # #

For more information please contact:
Sarah Kellman
Swets Blackwell
Tel: + 31 (0)252 435 584
Email: press@nl.swetsblackwell.com <mailto:press@nl.swetsblackwell.com>