+++ Press Release +++
Lisse, The Netherlands, 12 September 2000
Swets Blackwell and ScienceDirect announce linking agreement

Provides UK NESLI users with new options for accessing the world's largest
collection of scientific, technical and medical journals

ScienceDirect and Swets Blackwell announced yesterday the signing of an
agreement to establish linking between ScienceDirect and SwetsnetNavigator
for UK universities participating in NESLI. NESLI is the UK's National
Electronic Site Licence Initiative, in which Swets Blackwell is a partner in
the role of Managing Agent. The agreement will provide participants with
increased flexibility through a variety of linking options to
ScienceDirect's vast Web database of scientific technical and medical
journals.

"We are pleased that our linking agreement with Swets Blackwell adds extra
value for current ScienceDirect users in the UK," said Eric de Wilde,
Director of the Regional Sales Office, Elsevier Science Amsterdam. "We will
continue to seek opportunities to provide our customers with greater
flexibility and choice with regard to how they can access the information
they need."

Under the terms of the agreement, authorised NESLI users of
SwetsnetNavigator, whose institutions are also subscribers to ScienceDirect,
will be able to link from tables of contents, abstracts and search results
in SwetsnetNavigator to the journal articles in ScienceDirect. In addition,
the agreement allows NESLI users to link to ScienceDirect via the NESLI
website (www.nesli.ac.uk), as well as access articles directly via the
ScienceDirect site.

Commenting on the development, Steven Hartman, Sales and Marketing Director
of Swets Blackwell, said "The linking agreement will provide significant
benefits for NESLI institutions.  Access to the key data in ScienceDirect
will now be possible via multiple options - via the NESLI /
SwetsnetNavigator single interface, by way of a link on the NESLI website or
directly through ScienceDirect.  Users will be able to choose their
preferred route."

NESLI, the National Electronic Site Licence Initiative has been established
by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK Higher Education
Funding Councils, and is a service designed to promote the widespread
delivery and use of electronic journals in the UK Higher Education and
research community. NESLI is an initiative to address the many issues which
at present hinder the most effective use, access and purchase of electronic
journals in the academic library community. A partnership between Swets
Blackwell and MIMAS at the University of Manchester act as the Managing
Agent for NESLI to coordinate delivery of the electronic material, undertake
negotiations with publishers and oversee the day-to-day operation of the
programme to ensure that it provides value for money through cost effective
operation. (see www.nesli.ac.uk <http://www.nesli.ac.uk> )

SwetsnetNavigator offers a single point of access to a large range of
full-text titles, as well as tables of contents and abstracts. A new release
of SwetsnetNavigator with enhanced search functions has recently become
available. 65 publishers are currently participating in SwetsnetNavigator,
representing over 3,400 scholarly and research journals. More information on
the growing number of titles available in the service can be found by
visiting www.swetsnetnavigator.com <http://www.swetsnetnavigator.com> .

For further information please contact Sarah Kellman, Communication
Executive at Swets Blackwell.
Tel:    +31 (0)252 435 584
Fax:    +31 (0)252 415 888
Email:  press@nl.swetsblackwell.com
www.swetsblackwell.com <http://www.swetsblackwell.com>