JISC

Digital resource licensing and negotiations services for universities and colleges will be even more joined up with JISC Collections’ acquisition of a new company from 1 January 2010.

JISC Collections, the organisation which manages the acquisition and provision of digital resources for universities and colleges in the UK, has reached an agreement to acquire Oxfordshire-based Content Complete Ltd.
 
David House, chair of JISC Collections, said: “Our library clients, the publishers and content providers we work with and the staff in the respective organisations will all benefit from this more joined-up approach that will come with the merged company.”

For the last six years, Content Complete has been JISC Collections’ negotiation agent for NESLi2, the UK’s online journal initiative for the higher education and research communities and has delivered significant savings as a result of this focused and centralized approach.

The company has also worked very closely with JISC Collections on a range of projects and activities in this area including archiving, usage data, online journal business models and, more recently, e-textbooks.
 
David House explained:  “Over the last six years of working with Content Complete, our two organisations have become very close. We have the same attitudes and philosophies in terms of meeting the needs of our clients and share a range of complementary skills and levels of experience, and the obvious logic was to bring these together in a more formal and efficient way." 
 
Content Complete was established in 2003 by Albert Prior and Paul Harwood with the aim of supporting organisations involved in licensing scholarly online content. Paul Harwood, joint owner of Content Complete, who will join JISC Collections as deputy chief executive, said:  “As we pondered the next phase in the growth of Content Complete, it became more and more obvious to us that there was a solution very close to home and that was about bringing together the skills and experience of JISC Collections and Content Complete in a single entity.”

“I am excited about the prospect of working with Lorraine Estelle (CEO of JISC Collections) and her colleagues and helping to shape the new organisation in a way that meets the needs of our various stakeholders for a professional and efficient partner in the area of licensing online content,” he added. 
 
Content Complete was established in 2003 by Albert Prior and Paul Harwood with the aim of supporting organisations involved in licensing scholarly online content. The company provides an outsourced service, representing clients in direct negotiations with publishers on pricing and licensing issues. Content Complete employs seven staff and has a range of clients in the academic, health and corporate sectors.