Under the agreement, Questia will sponsor portions of AOL's Research & Learn Channel, which offers students and lifelong learners a gateway to knowledge by providing a one-stop shop for conducting research and learning more about specialized topics. Questia will also be available as an online library within Netscape's Research & Learn area and will sponsor the AOL Parenting areas of Homework Help and Back to School. In addition, the agreement provides AOL members who access the specified Questia links on the Research & Learn Channel with a 1-month free trial of the Questia service, which features major scholarly books and leading journal articles for undergraduate students in the liberal arts.

"Having an online library available in your home is one of the resources that is continually requested by our members," said Terry Crane, vice president ofAOL Education. "With the Questia online library, students and researchers will have 24-hour, 7-day-a-week access to a library of the same scholarly books found in the best collegiate libraries. We believe Questia will be a valuable and complementary addition to our Research & Learn Channel."

"With the steady increase of technology in today's classrooms, our agreement with America Online is great news for the increasing number of people who use the Internet as an academic tool," said Troy Williams, founder and CEO of Questia Media, Inc. "It will provide students, parents, teachers, and lifelong learners who visit AOL's Research & Learn access to more than 45,000 high-quality books and journal articles available in the Questia online library. With millions of AOL members visiting the Research & Learn Channel on a monthly basis, Questia will be able to reach and offer special promotions to a highly targeted audience that is predisposed to learning and continued education."

According to the announcement, as students increasingly migrate online for academic resources, Questia will satisfy their need for high-quality, credible content. Users can search the titles in the Questia library for free, while a subscription fee enables subscribers to read the entire book. Questia's scholarly library is combined with tools that facilitate research and paper writing, such as the automated footnote and bibliography generator, highlighter, dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and personalization tools.

Source: Questia Media, Inc., Houston, 888/950-2580, 713/358-2500; http://www.questia.com.