Content Complete was established in 2003 by Albert Prior and Paul Harwood with the aim of supporting organisations involved in licensing scholarly online content. The Company provides an outsourced service, representing clients in direct negotiations with publishers on pricing and licensing issues. Content Complete employs seven staff and has a range of clients in the academic, health and corporate sectors.

For the last six years, Content Complete has been JISC Collections' Negotiation Agent for NESLi2, the UK's online journal initiative for the higher education and research communities and has delivered significant savings as a result of this focused and centralized approach. The company has also worked very closely with JISC Collections on a range of projects and activities in this area including archiving, usage data, online journal business models and, more recently, e-textbooks.

Paul Harwood will join JISC Collections as Deputy CEO. Albert Prior has been reducing his working time at CCL with a view to retiring shortly, and will now take the opportunity to retire.

David House, Chair of JISC Collections said:

"Over the last six years of working with Content Complete, our two organisations have become very close. We have the same attitudes and philosophies in terms of meeting the needs of our clients and share a range of complementary skills and levels of experience, and the obvious logic was to bring these together in a more formal and efficient way. Our library clients, the publishers and content providers we work with and the staff in the respective organisations will all benefit from this more joined-up approach that will come with the merged company."

Paul Harwood, joint owner of Content Complete said:

"As we pondered the next phase in the growth of Content Complete, it became more and more obvious to us that there was a solution very close to home and that was about bringing together the skills and experience of JISC Collections and Content Complete in a single entity. I am excited about the prospect of working with Lorraine Estelle (CEO of JISC Collections) and her colleagues and helping to shape the new organisation in a way that meets the needs of our various stakeholders for a professional and efficient partner in the area of licensing online content."

Albert Prior, who jointly established Content Complete said:

"I am delighted that CCL will now be part of JISC Collections, with whom we have always had a very good relationship. The move is excellent for our staff and creates an organisation with a very impressive range of skills, experience and resources."

The newly integrated company will come into being on 1 January 2010 and work on bringing the two sets of staff together has already commenced. Content Complete staff will continue to operate from their offices in West Oxfordshire.  For NESLi2 institutions, and those institutions that use the JISC Collections helpdesk, your contacts and their contact details remain unchanged.