Press Release: New negotiation agent for NESLi2

["Sean Dunne" <sean.dunne@man.ac.uk>]

Dear Colleagues

The following Press Release has been issued on Friday (20th June) by the
Joint Information Systems Committee, Content Complete Ltd and NESLI

JISC appoints its new partner for NESLi2

The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that
Content Complete Ltd will be its Negotiation Agent for NESLi2, the new
electronic journals licensing initiative for Higher and Further Education
institutions, following a recent tender and selection process.

Content Complete Ltd have been appointed from 1st June and will handle all
negotiations with publishers. The co-founder of the new company, Albert
Prior, will be well known to many publishers and librarians the
world-over, having worked for Swets and Zeitlinger in a number of senior
roles for 25 years. On departing Swets Blackwell, Paul Harwood (currently
Managing Director of Swets Blackwell Ltd in the UK) will be joining Albert
Prior, in forming the new negotiating team.

Helping to maintain continuity with JISC's journals licensing activities
over the last five years, will be MIMAS who are partnering with Content
Complete Ltd in delivering the service. MIMAS will be providing the
helpdesk and communications functions of NESLi2.

Dr Tom Graham, Chair of the JISC's Journals Working Group, and Librarian
at Newcastle University, said: "The JISC is delighted that it has been
able to appoint Content Complete Ltd as its Negotiation Agent for
electronic journal content on behalf of UK Higher and Further Education,
under the NESLi2 service. The Journals Working Group undertook a thorough
review of the work carried out under the original NESLI initiative, and
the new service is specifically designed to build on the lessons of that
experience. We believe that the experience brought together in this
company will provide a particularly strong partner in the work of
negotiating on behalf of these communities, and in providing a good
service to libraries and their users."

NESLi2 will be building on the experiences of several years of licensing
of scholarly journals in the UK on behalf of the academic and research
communities. The original NESLI was one of the first programmes
internationally to actively promote and encourage use of a model licence
and this will again be a key feature of the successor scheme.

For more information about NESLi2, please visit the NESLi2  website at
www.nesli.ac.uk

For further information relating to this Press Release contact:

JISC:
Lorraine Estelle
Email: lorraine.estelle@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 2563

Content Complete Ltd:
Albert Prior
Email: albertjprior@aol.com
Tel: 01865 370845

MIMAS:
Julia Chruszcz
Email: Julia.chruszcz@man.ac.uk
Tel: 0161 275 6100

1 The JISC is a joint committee of the UK further and higher education
funding bodies, and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of
information and communication technology (ICT) to support learning,
teaching, and research.  It is best known for providing the SuperJANET
network, a range of advice and support services, and a portfolio of
high-quality resources.  Information about the JISC, its services and
programmes can be found at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/. Contact Philip Pothen
on +44 (0)20 7848 2935, email p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk.

2. Content Complete Ltd (CCL) is a new company established by Albert Prior
and Paul Harwood, both of whom have extensive journals related experience,
to provide support services to academic and research libraries and
institutions in the area of electronic content.

3. MIMAS is a JISC/ESRC supported national data centre providing the UK
higher education, further education and research community with networked
access to key data and information resources to support teaching, learning
and research across a wide range of disciplines. MIMAS is part of
Manchester Computing at the University of Manchester.
_________________________

Paul Davey
Communications Coordinator
JISC
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7848 2554/2935
Mobile: +44 (0)78666 88614
JISC Web site - www.jisc.ac.uk