New York, New York, March 29, 2006
The H.W. Wilson Company joins a select group of publishers picked by England's Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council (MLA) to provide reference databases for English public libraries through the Council's new service, Reference Online. The first initiative of its kind in England, Reference Online brings libraries convenient access to acclaimed web resources, chosen for quality and reference value. Public libraries that subscribe to the service can then make these resources available to their public at the touch of a button.

Reference Online builds on an ambitious program among UK public libraries to increase user access to the web (and web-based tools), including the recent establishment of the first national online presence for public libraries in England.

H.W. Wilson databases selected for Reference Online include:

Art Museum Image Gallery—A rich digital resource of art images and related multimedia gathered from the collections of distinguished museums around the world.

Biography Reference Bank—Coverage of over 500,000 people, with narrative profiles and links to more than 380,000 related full text articles.

Book Review Digest Plus—Indexes 1,300,000 reviews, and contains over 100,000 full-text reviews of reference works, textbooks, children's books, fiction and non-fiction.

OmniFile Full Text Select—A 100% full text database for research in the humanities, social sciences, general science, education, business, law, and popular periodical literature.

An icon in library reference since 1898, H.W. Wilson offers libraries more than 60 acclaimed reference databases on WilsonWeb, the company's leading-edge internet database service. For more on WilsonWeb databases, visit http://www.hwwilson.com.

About H.W. Wilson
http://www.hwwilson.com
Since 1898, independent publisher H.W. Wilson has provided researchers with references produced with unmatched editorial integrity. More than 60 H.W. Wilson databases-indexes, abstracts, full text resources, plus the acclaimed Retrospective Collection-meet the research needs of customers around the globe. From the long-popular Art Index to today's widely-praised Biography Reference Bank, H.W. Wilson products are created for librarians, by librarians. Over 150 Wilson editorial staff members with MLS or MLIS degrees-multi-lingual trained librarians and subject specialists-build the Wilson references each day. For more information, visit www.hwwilson.com.

About MLA
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) is the national development agency for museums, libraries and archives in England, advising the government on policy and priorities for the sector. MLA's roles are to provide strategic leadership, to act as a powerful advocate, to develop capacity and to promote innovation and change. http://www.mla.gov.uk