Berkeley Electronic Press and ProQuest Announcement

["Tim Tamminga" <ttamminga@bepress.com>]

The Berkeley Electronic Press ("bepress") and ProQuest to Expand 
bepress's Role with Digital Commons, the World's Leading Hosted 
Institutional Repository

Berkeley, CA - August 10, 2007 - ProQuest and The Berkeley 
Electronic Press ("bepress")  today announced that they have 
reached an agreement for bepress to purchase ownership of Digital 
Commons, the world's leading hosted institutional repository 
solution.  Bepress will be adding sales and marketing staff and 
augmenting its existing customer support and services in addition 
to the hosting and technology services that it has always 
provided Digital Commons customers.

Bepress Chairman, Aaron Edlin, said "Institutional Repositories 
are core to the bepress mission of furthering scholarly 
communication and thus bepress is excited at the opportunity to 
build a close relationship with Digital Commons customers. 
Developing successful and vibrant Institutional Repositories will 
be bepress's central focus."

ProQuest continues to believe that institutional repositories 
play an important role in the mission of academic libraries.  In 
the future, it plans to offer tools that enhance or are 
complementary with institutional repositories. ProQuest is 
confident that bepress will offer a high standard of customer 
service for Digital Commons subscribers.

Contacts:

Bepress:  Tim Tamminga, VP of Global Sales, bepress Services. 
510-665-1200 ext. 149 or email ttamminga@bepress.com.

ProQuest:  Tina Orozco, Publicist

Tina.Orozco@il.proquest.com
(734)761-4700 x2540

About ProQuest

ProQuest combines the strengths of two leading and historic 
information technology firms: ProQuest Information and Learning 
and CSA.  The company provides seamless access to and navigation 
of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world's 
scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow 
of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts, literature, 
and social science to science, technology, and medicine. ProQuest 
is part of Cambridge Information Group 
<http://www.cambridgeinformationgroup.com/>

ProQuest's vast content pools are available to researchers 
through libraries of all types and include the world's largest 
digital newspaper archive, periodical databases comprising the 
output of more than 9,000 titles and spanning more than 500 
years, the preeminent dissertation collection, and various other 
scholarly collections. Users access the information through the 
ProQuest and CSA Illumina Web-based online information systems, 
Chadwyck-Healey electronic and microform resources, UMIR 
microform and print reference products, eLibrary and SIRS 
educational resources, Ulrich's Serials Analysis System, COS 
Scholar Universe, and Serials Solutions resource management 
tools. Through the expertise of business units Serials Solutions 
and COS, ProQuest provides technological tools that allow 
researchers and libraries to better manage and use their 
information resources.  For more information, visit 
<http://www.proquest.com/> <http://www.csa.com/>.

About The Berkeley Electronic Press

Founded by academics in 1999, The Berkeley Electronic Press 
("bepress") is both a publisher of peer-reviewed electronic 
journals and a software developer, having created a variety of 
tools to facilitate open access publication.  Bepress's core 
mission is to promote efficient Scholarly Communication.  The 
bepress Institutional Repository platform currently powers the 
eScholarship Repository of the University of California system as 
well as over 50 schools using Digital Commons.  Visit: 
www.bepress.com for more information about bepress and its 
services and products.

###