CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, August 24, 2006 - Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest Information and Learning, has announced that it has released Unicode compliant versions of its electronic resource collection management tools at the annual International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) 72 nd Congress held this month in Seoul, Korea.

”Unicode compliance is the cornerstone of Serials Solutions' Internationalisation Project,” said Jane Burke, Serials Solutions general manager and vice-president of ProQuest Information and Learning. "Customer demand for Serials Solutions products has built this company into a leader in providing software for libraries to manage their electronic resources. Now, we're seeing growing interest in these services outside of North America . As a result, we're developing superior ways to serve the non-English language markets. Interest in Serials Solutions products has been particularly strong in Asia and Unicode compliance is essential for the meaningful display of Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.”

With Unicode compliance, Serials Solutions' E- Journal Portal (EJP™), a hosted electronic journal management solution, and Article Linker™, the company's OpenURL link resolver, can process journal titles and library holdings information in any left-right reading language. Libraries are able to input local title and holdings for their non-English left-right reading collections and give users access to these titles through EJP™ and Article Linker™.

Serials Solutions will create E-Journal Portal™ and Article Linker™ User Interface translations for Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Finnish, Italian, and Turkish, with other languages to be added over time. Serials Solutions will work with libraries who wish to customise their own user interfaces in any language--including Chinese, Japanese or Korean.

Central Search™, Serials Solutions' federated search engine, is also Unicode compliant and can match text in any Unicode left-to-right reading database. If a library user is searching on a computer with an appropriate language pack installed, the search string will be in entered Unicode and match whatever Unicode text is present in the Serials Solutions Knowledge Base™.

“We are pleased to release the Unicode-compliant versions of Serials Solutions' products concurrently with the World Library and Information 72nd IFLA Congress,” said Burke. “Serials Solutions serves a global community of libraries with multicultural users and multilingual collections. It is imperative that our systems be able to process the characters and symbols used to represent language information in all written forms. The Serials Solutions Internationalisation Project takes us an important step closer to satisfying the diverse and sophisticated information needs of our customers.”

"Demonstrations of Serials Solutions internationalisation features were available at the ProQuest Information and Learning booth at IFLA 2006 in Seoul, Korea.

If you would like further product information please e-mail marketing@proquest.co.uk

About Serials Solutions
Serials Solutions, part of ProQuest Information and Learning, is the industry-leader providing complete e-resource access and management solutions to over 1600 libraries worldwide. Founded by a librarian for librarians, Serials Solutions helps librarians and patrons find and use electronic content through its Access & Management Suite (AMS), Full MARC Records service for e-journals, Article Linker – Serials Solutions' comprehensive OpenURL link resolver, Central Search – a powerful federated search engine, and ERMS - a lifecycle manager for electronic subscriptions. For more information, please visit www.serialssolutions.com.

About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as Chadwyck-Healey™, UMI®, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.

More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any age and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.

For more information, visit www.proquest.com or the ProQuest parent company website, www.cig.com.