Swets Blackwell is First Subscription Agent to Achieve COUNTER Level 2
Compliance
Lisse, the Netherlands - October 15, 2003

Swets Blackwell has announced today that it is the first subscription agent
member to achieve level 2 compliance with COUNTER's international e-journal
usage standards. Swets has signed a formal declaration of compliance with
COUNTER, an international initiative launched in March 2002 designed to
serve librarians, publishers and intermediaries by facilitating the
recording and exchange of online usage statistics.
COUNTER's (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources)
specifications included data elements already collected by SwetsWise, Swets
Blackwell's web-based modular service for the procurement, access and
management of subscriptions and online information. Covering over 7660 full
text publications from 272 publishers, SwetsWise's participation also
dramatically increases the number of titles and publishers for which
COUNTER-compliant usage reports are now available (www.projectCounter.org
<www.projectCounter.org> ).

Steven Hartman, Swets Blackwell's Commercial Director noted, "We are proud
to be the first subscription agent to make COUNTER compliant usage
statistics available for its customers. The COUNTER initiative complements
our goal of providing the library community with the functionality they
need. We look forward to contributing to the development of the COUNTER Code
of Practice over the coming years by routing customer responses back to the
project."

Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Project Director, said "We are thrilled that the
number of organizations complying with the Code of Practice continues to
grow, and that the first subscription agent has achieved compliance -
effectively making COUNTER-compliant usage data available for many more
titles."

About Swets Blackwell
Swets Blackwell is a leading, global subscription agent, with offices in 23
countries across six continents. It provides a wide variety of subscription
management solutions for academic, scientific, technical, medical, corporate
and government libraries and information centers worldwide. Founded in 1901,
Swets Blackwell counts among its 60,000 customers many of the world's major
research libraries and over 30% of the Fortune 500 companies. Please note
that Swets Blackwell will change its name to Swets Information Services as
of December 2nd 2003. For more information, visit www.swetsblackwell.com
<www.swetsblackwell.com>

About SwetsWise
SwetsWise offers one platform with two modules: SwetsWise online content and
SwetsWise subscriptions. The online content module offers users a single
point of access to content from the world's leading publishers, boasting
over 13 million searchable references and links to full-text articles
available from such prestigious publishers as as Elsevier, Wiley, Blackwell
Publishing, Kluwer, Springer, Emerald, Taylor & Francis, and OECD. The
subscription module gives full control over all steps of the subscription
management process. More information about SwetsWise online content and,
SwetsWise subscriptions can be found at www.swetswise.com
<www.swetswise.com> .

Swets Blackwell Media Contact:
Ylann Schemm, Communications Executive
Tel.: +31 (0)252 435 584
Email: [log in to unmask]