XanEdu Maintains Edge with MetaText Acquisition
ANN ARBOR, Mich., August 12, 2002 — XanEdu, a division of ProQuest Information & Learning, announced the acquisition of MetaText, the leading provider of digital textbooks through its pedagogical Web-based platform for college and university courses. The combination of MetaText’s collection of digital textbooks from leading textbook publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Wiley and Houghton-Mifflin with its pedagogical features and XanEdu’s unique curriculum-based products, promises to provide a comprehensive solution for delivering custom digital and print course material.
“This acquisition is strategic to XanEdu’s vision of being the leading provider of customized learning materials for the higher education academic market,” says Lew Gossage, XanEdu’s Senior Vice President and General Manager. “With MetaText, we can deliver the best integrated solution possible, offering faculty the most extensive selection of textbook content, tools, and services. With a common focus on synergistic course content, superior platforms and superior service, XanEdu will take instruction and learning to the next level and continue to be the industry leader.”
In 2003, XanEdu will deliver a fully integrated digital content solution including digital textbook content, tools, Websites, ReSearch, and periodical content. MetaText brings more than 250 digital textbooks from 80% of the leading college textbook publishers, and complements XanEdu’s aggregation of pre-copyright-cleared content. XanEdu’s existing databases offer millions of articles from thousands of copyright-cleared scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers. XanEdu also has one of the largest business case archives including Harvard, NACRA, Ivey, and additional unique, hard-to-find materials. The combination of this content and Web-based delivery will enable faculty to select specific course-centric textbook readings with current and highly relevant articles, cases and other curriculum materials, plus the option to add other content through XanEdu’s copyright clearance service.
XanEdu’s MetaText platform offers a variety of compelling tools for customizing text and communicating with students and will add significant value to XanEdu’s intuitive CoursePack interface. With MetaText’s syllabus creation tools, faculty can organize the content without requiring knowledge of HTML. Also with MetaText, instructors can annotate any paragraph or highlight information, further adding relevance to the text and emphasizing important points. Students can also highlight specific sections of text and make annotations in the margins. Other tools are available to help faculty track student progress and easily communicate with them. Both systems can be integrated into a learning management system or can be used independently.
Herb Hilderley, formerly MetaText’s division manager will join XanEdu as a consultant during the transition period. Mr. Hilderley lauds this acquisition, saying, “We are thrilled to join XanEdu. XanEdu has established a strong position in the higher education academic market and benefit MetaText greatly by opening previously unavailable distribution channels to the MetaText’s products. In addition, XanEdu’s large and growing customer base of early technology adopting instructors is an ideal target audience for MetaText’s services. Through the integration of MetaText digital textbooks with XanEdu(tm) CoursePacks and XanEdu(tm) ReSearch Engines, we will deliver a comprehensive integrated digital content solution for higher education.”
About XanEdu
XanEdu is a division of ProQuest Information & Learning. It publishes online and offline course materials for the higher education market, helping faculty teach smarter and students learn smarter. XanEdu also has amassed one of the largest commercial and scholarly archives of journals, periodicals, newspapers, books, dissertations, primary literature works, and academic collections, through its parent, ProQuest Information & Learning. For more information about XanEdu, visit www.xanedu.com
About ProQuest Information and Learning
ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and distributing information worldwide to researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general-reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through the ProQuest® Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-Healey(tm) electronic and microform resources, UMI® microform and print reference products, and XanEdu(tm) online faculty and student resources. For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.
About OCLC
Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization that provides computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing and preservation services to 41,000 libraries in 82 countries and territories. OCLC was founded in 1967 to improve access to the world’s information and reduce information costs, and conducts ongoing research to develop technologies to support that mission.
Ingrid Ellerbe
Vice President of Marketing and Sales
XanEdu (Division of ProQuest Information and Learning)
(800) 218-5971, ext. 6509
iellerbe@xanedu.com
http://www.xanedu.com
