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Former First Lady Barbara Bush Joins the Questia Media, Inc. Advisory
Council
Harvard University Library Director, Xerox Chief Scientist and CNI Executive Also Join
Former First Lady Barbara Bush, Harvard University Library Director Dr. Sidney Verba, Xerox Corporation Chief Scientist Dr. John Seely Brown and Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Director Dr. Clifford Lynch will serve as the first members of the newly formed Questia Media, Inc. Advisory Council. By giving strategic counsel and guidance to Questia's senior leadership team, they will influence the development of the world's foremost online research service. At launch in early 2001, the Questia service will provide subscribing undergraduates with unlimited, simultaneous access to its hyperlinked online collection of 50,000 scholarly books and journals in the liberal arts, combined with a suite of writing tools that will make composing papers faster and easier.
"These four extraordinary leaders, form an impressive foundation for the Questia Advisory Council," said Questia Founder and CEO Troy Williams. "Their collective wisdom and commitment to literacy and education will be invaluable in assisting us in understanding the public policy implications of the Questia service on higher education specifically, and learning generally. Additionally, these perspectives will help us ensure the Questia service, which holds the promise of substantially broadening much of the world's access to scholarly content, is beneficial to each sector of society that it impacts."
Questia will transform the nature of academic research by providing students access to tens of thousands of liberal arts books and journals, which have hyperlinked footnotes and bibliographies for easy and seamless cross-referencing. The service encourages thorough academic research and ultimately fosters a richer learning experience by enabling users to conveniently and quickly explore many important scholarly works online. Questia's scholarly content is combined with tools that facilitate research and paper writing such as a citation assistant and tools that automatically generate users footnotes and bibliographies in specified style formats. A highlighter, dictionary, encyclopedia, and a number of other personalization tools are also included. The online collection is expected to grow to 250,000 liberal arts titles by 2003.
"Questia presents the first opportunity for individuals to access many important works on the Internet, expanding access to great books and furthering education worldwide," said former First Lady Barbara Bush. "It is imperative that the Internet provide students with the foundation and tools to compete in the 21st century. The first step on that path is enabling more people to have access to credible resources online."
"Clearly the mission and vision of Questia is to enable more people around the world to have access to quality information, much of which is available only in a limited number of large libraries today," added Harvard University Library Director Dr. Sidney Verba.
Questia Media Inc. Advisory Council members will serve for a two-year term, meeting twice annually to guide Questia's senior leadership team in setting strategic objectives and in understanding the implications of the Questia service for education. Questia expects to name additional members to the Council over the next few months.
"The potential of the Internet to dramatically impact human learning has not been fully realized to date," Xerox Chief Scientist Dr. John Seely Brown said. "The innovation of the Questia service is an important step in enabling individuals to maximize the inherent potential of the Internet. A major focus of my research over the years has been in using technology to further human knowledge and promoting lifelong learning and I see Questia as instrumental in delivering on this mission."
"Questia is offering an innovative approach to the research process," CNI Director Dr. Clifford Lynch said. "It will enable people worldwide to have constant access to a first-rate undergraduate collection of materials in the humanities and social sciences; this should be a boon not only to traditional college students, but to everyone involved in teaching, learning and research. And Questia's vision of integrating content with authoring and research tools moves us towards the goal of building digital libraries as amplifiers of intellectual productivity."
About the Council Members
About Questia
Founded in 1998, Questia Media, Inc. is building the first online service to provide unlimited access to the full text of hundreds of thousands of books and journals, as well as tools to easily use this information. For millions of college students and researchers, the QuestiaSM service will enable them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston with more than 270 employees, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Information can be found at www.questia.com.
Contacts
Ann Brimberry
Public Relations Manager
(713) 358-2704 / (713) 562-8817 cell
ABrimberry@questia.com
Media:
Richards/Gravelle Public Relations
Stacie Barnett (214) 891-2910
stacie_barnett@richards.com
