Berkeley, CA – November 30, 2007. Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) is pleased to announce that the libraries of Cal Poly State University (CA), Babson College (MA), and Fordham University (NY) have all signed contracts with bepress for their Digital Commons platforms. In addition, Cal Poly is implementing bepress's SelectedWorks, a platform for building individual faculty pages. SelectedWorks and Digital Commons are integrated, enabling migration of authors' works from the faculty page to the repository.

Michael Miller, Dean of Library Services at Cal Poly explained why they chose bepress's Digital Commons: "Cal Poly was attracted to bepress because it offers the scalability and reliability that we look for in a digital solution. As a turn-key system, bepress allows us to focus on areas where our time is better spent: working directly with faculty and students to collect high-quality content, promoting open access to research, and facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration. We are confident that Digital Commons and SelectedWorks will enable us to swiftly mount a standards-based service for Cal Poly that will be maintained for a long time to come."

Hope Tillman, Director of Libraries at Babson College, stated "after we determined that Babson College needed an Institutional Repository, we decided on Digital Commons because it could provide the structure we needed without requiring extensive IT support. Bepress has the reputation that we wanted to handle and preserve our intellectual property."

James McCabe, University Librarian at Fordham, said "we chose Digital Commons because it was the most fully developed product available."

"We are extremely pleased to be working with three more prestigious institutions," said Aaron Edlin, bepress Chairman. "The decision taken by these institutions confirms that Digital Commons is the best option for libraries to showcase faculty and student scholarship as well as the activities of the institution itself."

Contact: Tim Tamminga, VP of Global Sales, bepress services. 510-665-1200 ext. 149 or email ttamminga@bepress.com.

About The Berkeley Electronic Press

Founded by academics in 1999, The Berkeley Electronic Press ("bepress") is both a publisher of peer-reviewed electronic journals and a software developer, having created a variety of tools to facilitate open access publication. Bepress's core mission is to promote efficient Scholarly Communication. The bepress Institutional Repository platform currently powers the eScholarship Repository of the University of California system as well as over 50 schools using Digital Commons. Visit www.bepress.com for more information about bepress and its services and products.