Books24x7 Launches Personalizable User Interface for Faster, More Efficient Access to Critical Business and IT Information

Referenceware subscribers can now create and manage an unlimited number of folders to align critical reference content with individual needs and specific corporate initiatives. Subscribers save time by having immediately accessible reference materials for various projects and areas of professional interest. Users can also create folders with hand-selected books and other reference materials for sharing with other department or team members. The new interface also incorporates new features and enhancements for collaboration, accessing most recently read titles, controlling search-term highlighting, and quickly finding newest additions to Referenceware collections, currently encompassing more than 5,000 IT, business, finance and desktop application titles.

“The new interface reflects our mission — to help today’s corporate professionals instantaneously find the answers to critical business and IT problems,” said John Ambrose, general manager of Books24x7. “Books24x7 is much more than the most comprehensive on-line collection of IT and business titles on the market. Our powerful search engine, combined with a range of features for efficiently managing, pinpointing, and sharing information, make us an essential productivity tool for today’s knowledge workers.”

Specific new features of the newly launched interface, now in use by direct Books24x7 clients worldwide, include:

• The ability to set up an unlimited number of personal folders, each with an unlimited number of titles. Users can organize favorite titles according to different projects and areas of interest for instant access to frequently referenced information. Folders can also be shared with other Books24x7 users.
  
• Enhanced integration with most common email programs, such as Outlook and Outlook Express, for information sharing. Subscribers can also use existing email distribution lists.
  
• A new tool bar that gives subscribers easy access on every page to icons for bookmarking, notating, browsing, collaborating, and managing information. Users also have the ability to perform additional searches from every page.
  LI>Tabs to retrieve the subscriber’s most recently accessed titles, as well as lists of the newest books added to Books24x7 and titles most frequently accessed by all subscribers.
  
• New controls enable users to turn search-term highlighting on and off for easy readability.

• Automatic tracking of the last pages viewed. Books24x7 automatically “holds the place” for the last books viewed by the subscriber and provides a link to the last page viewed when the book is again selected.
  
• New graphic design elements for an enriched user experience and easier navigation.

“Organizations are rapidly recognizing the importance of informal, just- in-time learning and reference tools,” said Ambrose. “Books24x7 has already proven its use positively impacts the bottom line in hundreds of organizations. This new interface makes a great tool even better.”

About Books24x7
Books24x7, a subsidiary of SkillSoft PLC (Nasdaq: SKIL), offers subscription clients online access to more than 5,000 unabridged IT and business books and reports. Books24x7’s patent-pending technology platform enables users to pinpoint business-critical information quickly by performing multi-tier, online searches of the company’s Referenceware collections: ITPro, BusinessPro, FinancePro, and OfficeEssentials.

Books24x7 helps bridge the gap between what employees know and need to know in hundreds of leading organizations, including Bank of America, EDS, and Lockheed Martin. The company has relationships with more than 85 leading publishers, including AMACOM, Apress, ASTD, Harvard Business School Publishing, McGraw-Hill, Microsoft Press, and John Wiley & Sons. For more information, visit www.books24x7.com.

SkillSoft, SkillPort, RolePlay, Search-and-Learn, e-Learning for the Knowledge Economy, NetUniversity, and Accelerated Path are trademarks and/or servicemarks of SkillSoft PLC. Books24x7 and Referenceware are servicemarks of Books24x7, Inc. All brand names, trademarks, or registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Contacts:
Linda Galloway
Apollo Associates LLC
203 790 1591
lgalloway@apolloassociates.com