Bowker Teams with Digi-Rights® to Connect Publishers with Rights and Permissions Support

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J., May 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest affiliate Bowker® is expanding the range of services available to users of MyIdentifiers.com by including a link to Digi-Rights® Direct, a patented suite of automated rights solutions and services for authors and publishers. This cloud-based service is designed to enable users to optimize their rights so that revenues are maximized and risks from copyright liability issues are minimized. The link to Digi-Rights Direct is part of Bowker's larger program to identify high-quality providers of key services for authors and small publishers, connecting them through MyIdentifiers.com.

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"Rights and permissions can be very confusing for any publisher and finding a quality resource to help navigate those waters can be a real challenge," said Beat Barblan, Director of Identifier Services at Bowker. "We're impressed by Digi-Rights' straightforward approach and we're delighted to include them among the services to which we connect our authors and publishers."

The goal of Digi-Rights® Direct is to help authors and publishers achieve effective rights control, providing them with oversight of the rights process, helping them manage budgets, enabling copyright compliance and optimizing rights values. A key component of the offering is a self-administered "Rights Assessment" app that helps publishers identify what rights the author has or may need to obtain from third party licenses and then, develop an action plan to mitigate copyright issues.

"Users of MyIdentifiers.com will now have quick access to a service that can allow them to simply, effectively and efficiently clear and exploit the full range of rights and permissions issues and opportunities they possess for their content," said Dick Stahl, Managing Director of Digi-Rights. "This is an application that is useful not only to small and independent presses, but to larger publishers, too -- especially those who require their authors to clear their own rights and permissions."

MyIdentifiers.com, part of Bowker® Identifier Services, provides authors and publishers with the products and services that allow their books to be discovered. As the United States' official ISBN Agency customer service interface, it is the first stop in publishing and selling books and now includes a growing range of tools to help expand the audiences for authors' works.

About Digi-EXPress, LLC

Digi-EXPress, LLC, is a global provider of consulting, systems development, and rights management services to the publishing industry. The company has processed hundreds of thousands of licensing transactions by leading publishers through its Digi-EXPress® Rights Management System… a 'patented' suite of cloud-based software technologies and 'best-practice' processes that deliver automated rights clearance and permissions processing, contracts and rights relational database, and 'real-time' management dashboards for team collaboration. (www.digi-express.com).

About Bowker® (www.bowker.com)

Bowker is the world's leading provider of bibliographic information and management solutions designed to help publishers, booksellers, and libraries better serve their customers. Creators of products and services that make books easier for people to discover, evaluate, order, and experience, the company also generates research and resources for publishers, helping them understand and meet the interests of readers worldwide. Bowker, a ProQuest affiliate, is the official ISBN Agency for the United States and its territories. The company is headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey, with additional operations in England and Australia.

SOURCE Bowker