H.W. Wilson Upgrades WilsonWeb Information System
WilsonWeb 2.4 Reflects Enhancements Suggested by Librarians and Subscribers

New York, New York, March 29th, 2005
As part of an ongoing program of product improvement reflecting insights and suggestions H.W. Wilson encourages from its customers, new enhancements to WilsonWeb, the popular web-based reference database service, are now in place.

"Streamlining the search experience is always a priority," commented WilsonWeb product manager Bernie Seiler. "The challenge is to accomplish this while also maintaining precision and versatility. Thanks to dedicated librarians both on staff and in our subscriber base, WilsonWeb 2.4 is another move in the right direction." WilsonWeb 2.4 enhancements include:

New Search Default for Full Text Databases
Full text databases on earlier versions of WilsonWeb automatically searched the complete text of articles for search terms. Now users can set this option to suit their need, by checking or unchecking the new "search within the full text" box. Unchecked (the new default), means only article titles, abstracts, subject headings, and other important bibliographic fields are searched. Check the box to retrieve all articles that mention the search term at all, even just once in the text. Either way, WilsonWeb always delivers the most relevant hits at the top of results.

New Basic Search Screen
No need to specify Natural Language or Boolean searching on the new Basic Search screen-just enter your search terms, with any Boolean operators you wish, and click Start. The new Basic Search recognizes and executes Boolean operators automatically, and returns results sorted by relevance.

New Persistent URLs for Records
Now it's much easier to save a record for later retrieval, with the new Persistent URL function. Just click on the appropriate Article Link field, and the record's URL is saved to your browser's clipboard, for users to paste into any document. Other handy information, such as author, title, volume number, issue date, and page number are also saved, making it easy for users to identify the record at a later date.

Convenient New Window for WilsonLink
Clicking WilsonWeb's WilsonLink icon launches an automatic search of a library's Open-URL databases or the web. Now, the results appear in a new window, even as original WilsonWeb search results remain handy on-screen.

Search Terms Highlighted in Abstracts and Articles
Now users can see immediately where their search term is mentioned and in what context, for fast assessment of the value of an article. WilsonWeb now highlights the search terms in article abstracts and article text on our bibliographic databases (and in the text on biography databases), as well as in Subject and Title fields.

Other software changes are also in effect, including a wider choice of default settings, such as the setting for the number of records per screen or the format for saved records. For more on what's new in the WilsonWeb 2.4 Enhancements, visit www.hwwilson.com.

New improvements to the WilsonWeb hardware are also in place, bringing users faster and more reliable service.

More server capacity: Wilson recently added 20% more servers to search-processing infrastructure.

More processing power: Upgrades to processing chips and the addition of more servers has resulted in a 30% overall increase in the processing power of the WilsonWeb system.

Greater reliability: Additional capacity and redundancy on the network and storage side means helps ensure dependable service.

Monitoring of user end-to-end response time: Wilson now has the ability, through Mercury Managed Systems, to monitor end-to-end response time. Monitoring takes place from several points of presence on the Internet. WilsonWeb has also been configured to provide and log end-to-end response time.