ProQuest will digitize the complete historical backfiles of Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times from their first published editions in 1847 and 1881, respectively, and make both article and full page images available to users. This historical content will be available to the library market exclusively from ProQuest.

In addition, distribution rights for microform and ASCII text from these newspapers, as well as nine other Tribune Company newspapers, are covered by this distribution arrangement. The additional newspapers (to be available from ProQuest both electronically and in microform) include:

• Hartford (Conn.) Courant
• Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel
• Newport News (Va.) Daily Press
• Baltimore (Md.) Sun
• South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• Stamford (Conn.) Advocate*
• Newsday (N.Y.)
• Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call
• Greenwich (Conn.) Time*

*Will be available for the first time to the academic and library markets in an electronic database

"The sheer volume and premium nature of this content will have tremendous impact on our newspaper offerings to customers," said Alan Aldworth, President and Chief Operating Officer, ProQuest Company. "Chicago Tribune is one of the most respected news sources and is considered the premier midwestern paper. It has a distinguished history, dating back to 1847. Likewise, Los Angeles Times, the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country, brings its unique and highly valued West coast perspective to national and international news. We are delighted to bring this information&emdash;and content from their respected sister publications&emdash;to libraries and educational institutions around the world."

Both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times backfiles will be developed as part of the company's ProQuest Historical Newspapers^TM project, which was initiated in 2001 to bring the deep archival content of newspapers to digital form.

"Tribune Publishing is delighted to continue its tradition of innovation in news gathering and delivery by sharing in this exciting project with ProQuest, a company which clearly shares our desire to develop the finest information products," said Howard Tyner, Vice President/Editorial, Tribune Publishing. "Students, researchers, genealogy buffs, and everyone else interested in American history since the Civil War era will now have the opportunity to view newspaper pages much as readers in the Midwest and West Coast have done every morning for over 150 years."

Using advanced zoning and indexing processes, ProQuest will digitally reproduce every issue from cover to cover--not just the news stories and editorials, but also the photos, graphics, and advertisements. Searchers will be able to enter terms (keywords, dates, author's name, article type, etc.) to search the full file. A results list will supply bibliographic information, including date, page number, and author's name (where provided). To see the text, the user simply chooses the article, and the article image is displayed. Users will also be able to display the full page image of any page in any issue. The databases will be completely browseable by issue, allowing searchers to browse through entire issues page by page as they would a printed paper.

The ProQuest Historical Newspapers project encompasses newspapers with deep historical value for researchers in various fields. Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times will join other prestigious U.S. newspapers already in the ProQuest program: The New York Times (completed July 2002), The Wall Street Journal (completed July 2002), as well as The Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Post (both scheduled for completion in Spring 2003). The company has already digitized The Times of London from 1785 to 1870 (known as Palmer's Full Text Online).

In addition to the historical content, ProQuest will deliver the full ASCII text of current information for all Tribune Publishing newspapers (see above). Files for the non-historical content will include coverage from the mid-to-late 1980s.

"We are especially excited about the return of Chicago Tribune full text to ProQuest," said Rod Gauvin, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Information and Learning. "Its unique editorial perspective on local and national news is important to library users in the Midwest and across the country. In addition, we're pleased to welcome two key Florida titles back: the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel, as well as bring three new titles to our content set: Newport News Daily Press, Stamford Advocate, and Greenwich Time."

Both the current full-text and historical full-image information will be delivered to subscribers via the ProQuest online information service. Customers subscribing to both files will have seamless access to historical and current information.

Many of the Tribune Company newspapers included in this new agreement will also use the ProQuest Archiver™ e-commerce solution to distribute their archives to the consumer market via their respective websites. ProQuest Archiver provides newspapers with a complete e-commerce-enabled turnkey Web archive so they can market their content to subscribers. This will bring the total number of newspapers and publishers using the ProQuest Archiver product to nearly 100. More information about ProQuest Archiver is available at www.pqarchiver.com.

Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB) is one of the country's premier media companies, operating businesses in broadcasting, publishing and on the Internet. It reaches more than 80 percent of U.S. households and is the only media company with television stations, newspapers and Web sites in the nation's top three markets. Tribune media span 23 major-market television stations, including national superstation WGN- TV; 11 market-leading daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Newsday; and news and information Web sites in 18 of the nation's top 30 markets.

ProQuest Company (NYSE: PQE) is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and is a leading provider of value-added information and content to the library and education, and automotive and powersports industries. We provide products and services to our customers through two business segments: Information & Learning and Business Solutions. Through our Information & Learning segment, which primarily serves the library and education markets, we aggregate and publish value-added content from a wide range of sources including newspapers, periodicals, and books. Our Business Solutions segment, formerly known as Bell & Howell Publishing Services, is primarily engaged in the delivery in electronic form of comprehensive parts information to the automotive market. It also provides dealers in the powersports (motorcycle, marine and RV) markets with management systems that enable them to manage their inventory, customer service, and other aspects of their businesses.

ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and distributing information worldwide to researchers, faculty, and students in libraries and schools. Known widely for its strength in business and economics, general-reference, humanities, social sciences, and STM content, the company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from more than 8,500 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through ProQuest®, the company's Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-Healey™ electronic and microform resources, and UMI® microform and print reference products. For more information about ProQuest Information and Learning, visit www.il.proquest.com.