---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 09:11:24 -0500
From: Michael Markwith <MMarkwith@swetsinc.com>
Subject: Swets Blackwell Completion

Press Release

Lisse, March 9th, 2000
Joint Venture of Swets Blackwell now complete.

The boards of Blackwell Limited and Swets & Zeitlinger are delighted to
announce that the merger between Blackwell's Information Services and Swets
Subscription Service has now been completed.

This follows the signing of the merger agreement November 30, 1999, to
create a joint venture combining the two companies. After due diligence and
tax and regulatory processes, the recent approval of the Office of Fair
Trade in the United Kingdom has made completion possible.

This merger is between the subscription agency and information service
divisions of Blackwell Limited and Swets & Zeitlinger. The new company with
a head office based in The Netherlands  is called Swets Blackwell. Swets &
Zeitlinger and Blackwell Limited are both shareholders in the new company,
with Swets being the majority shareholder.

Blackwell Ltd retains its library bookselling division, Blackwell's Book
Services, and its UK retail bookselling operation, Blackwell Retail Ltd
outside the joint venture while Swets & Zeitlinger retains its publishing,
document services, psychological tests and publishers' services divisions as
separate entities.

Work is well underway on the structure of the new company; the integration
of personnel, offices and systems and the rationalisation of the company's
services and products. The overall integration of all systems and offices
will be completed by 2001 with the majority of the systems being fully
integrated during 2000.

Swets Blackwell is the leading global subscription agent and information
services company with a turnover in excess of one billion US Dollars. Its
offices are in 19 countries with a total staff of over 1000. The company
provides a complete range of services to libraries, scholars and publishers
in the area of print and electronic journal provision and management. The
unique services that both Swets and Blackwell's have developed in recent
years to provide access to full text electronic journals, databases and
contents information are being integrated and will be re-launched later this
year.

Journal publishing and distribution are undergoing fundamental changes
because of the impact of the Internet. The joint venture agreement is a
result of the recognition by both companies that their combined skills and
expertise place the new company, Swets Blackwell, in a unique position to
meet the evolving needs of customers and publishers.

Notes for editors:

Blackwell's Information Services, a division of Blackwell Limited, has
been in the library supply and information delivery business for over 90
years, serving academic, medical, corporate and government library
markets. It has offices in Oxford, New York, New Jersey, Sydney, Taiwan,
Brazil, Korea, South Africa and Singapore. Related companies include
Blackwell Retail Ltd. (84 UK bookshops), Blackwell's Books Services
(global library supply of books) and two publishing companies: Blackwell
Science and Blackwell Publishing.

Swets Subscription Service is a division of Swets & Zeitlinger, an
international company heavily involved in all developments within the area
of electronic publishing and the distribution of scientific and
professional information. Swets Subscription Service has offices in 18
countries and handles subscriptions for some 200,000 titles from more than
50,000 publishers worldwide. Increasing numbers of titles are now
electronic-based or delivered via the Internet. Other divisions within
Swets and Zeitlinger are Swets Backsets Service (backsets and reprints of
scholarly journals), Swets Document Systems (data conversion), Swets Test
Publishers (development and publishing of psychological tests), Swets &
Zeitlinger Publishers (scholarly journal and book publishers). Swets &
Zeitlinger has over 800 employees.

For further information please contact:
Bart de Gans, Communications Manager Swets & Zeitlinger BV,
tel +31 252 435388, email bdegans@swets.nl