Press release - JISC Collections to acquire Content Complete Ltd

["Brian Mitchell" <b.mitchell@jisc.ac.uk>]

London, 7 October 2009

Press release

JISC Collections to acquire Content Complete Ltd

JISC Collections, the organisation which manages the acquisition and provision
of digital resources for universities and colleges in the UK, has reached an
agreement to acquire Content Complete Ltd, the Oxfordshire-based licensing and
negotiations company.

Content Complete was established in 2003 by Albert Prior and Paul Harwood with
the aim of supporting organisations involved in licensing scholarly online
content. The Company provides an outsourced service, representing clients in
direct negotiations with publishers on pricing and licensing issues. Content
Complete employs seven staff and has a range of clients in the academic, health
and corporate sectors.

For the last six years, Content Complete has been JISC Collections' Negotiation
Agent for NESLi2, the UK's online journal initiative for the higher education
and research communities and has delivered significant savings as a result of
this focused and centralised approach. The company has also worked very closely
with JISC Collections on a range of projects and activities in this area
including archiving, usage data, online journal business models and, more
recently, e-textbooks.

Paul Harwood will join JISC Collections as Deputy CEO. Albert Prior has been
reducing his working time at Content Complete with a view to retiring shortly,
and will now take the opportunity to retire.

David House, Chair of JISC Collections said:

"Over the last six years of working with Content Complete, our two organisations
have become very close. We have the same attitudes and philosophies in terms of
meeting the needs of our clients and share a range of complementary skills and
levels of experience, and the obvious logic was to bring these together in a
more formal and efficient way. Our library clients, the publishers and content
providers we work with and the staff in the respective organisations will all
benefit from this more joined-up approach that will come with the merged
company."

Paul Harwood, joint owner of Content Complete said:

"As we pondered the next phase in the growth of Content Complete, it became more
and more obvious to us that there was a solution very close to home and that was
about bringing together the skills and experience of JISC Collections and
Content Complete in a single entity. I am excited about the prospect of working
with Lorraine Estelle (CEO of JISC Collections) and her colleagues and helping
to shape the new organisation in a way that meets the needs of our various
stakeholders for a professional and efficient partner in the area of licensing
online content."

Albert Prior, who jointly established Content Complete said:

"I am delighted that CCL will now be part of JISC Collections, with whom we have
always had a very good relationship. The move is excellent for our staff and
creates an organisation with a very impressive range of skills, experience and
resources."

The newly integrated company will come into being on 1 January 2010 and work on
bringing the two sets of staff together has already commenced. Content Complete
staff will continue to operate from their offices in West Oxfordshire. For
NESLi2 institutions, and those institutions that use the JISC Collections
helpdesk, your contacts and their contact details remain unchanged.

Ends

--------------------------------------------------------

About JISC Collections:

JISC Collections was established as a mutual trading company by the UK further
and higher education funding councils in 2006 to negotiate with publishers of
online information and other owners of digital content. The range of resources
licensed for use by such agreements constitutes a large national collection of
online resources for education and research. JISC Collections is funded by
JISC. For further information on JISC Collections, please go to
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk.

About Content Complete:

Content Complete Ltd (CCL) was established in 2003 by Paul Harwood and Albert
Prior. The company specialises in providing outsourced negotiation services for
online content on behalf of organisations and consortia in the public and
private sectors. CCL has been JISC Collections' Negotiation Agent for NESLi2,
the UK's national online journal initiative since 2003 and has also worked
closely with IReL, The Irish Research eLibrary for the last five years. In the
corporate sector, CCL has been working with some of the leading pharmaceutical
companies since 2004. For more information on Content Complete, please go to:
http://www.contentcomplete.com.

Contact:

Lorraine Estelle (l.estelle@jisc.ac.uk)

Albert Prior (aprior@contentcomplete.com)

Paul Harwood (pharwood@contentcomplete.com)


----- End forwarded message -----