Harcourt Education Selects North Plains Systems' TeleScope Enterprise Asset Management Solution

SEYBOLD SEMINARS, NEW YORK (BOOTH #319) - February 20, 2002 - North Plains Systems, Inc., the innovator in enterprise-class asset management solutions, today announced that Harcourt Education has selected, and is in the final stages of implementing, North Plains Systems' TeleScope Enterprise asset management solution to manage the organization's library of complex digital files.

The TeleScope Enterprise implementation includes three business units within Harcourt Education. The TeleScope Enterprise system will be a key resource supporting Harcourt's multiple media product development strategy.

"Asset management helps us improve our operational capabilities, processes, and workflows, while leveraging intellectual property across our business units," said Michael Farmer, Director of Intellectual Property Resources for Harcourt Education. "We determined that North Plains Systems' scalable TeleScope enterprise solution fully supported print-based workflows as well as our multi-media e-learning initiatives - all while increasing productivity, efficiency, and time-to-market throughout our organization. Additionally, TeleScope's ability to integrate with existing systems and support flexible XML data architecture was very compelling."

The infinite flexibility of TeleScope's architecture, combined with its industry leading XML components, gives publishers the tools they need to deliver content in new ways. TeleScope makes it possible to extract elements of existing documents and dynamically generate new media assets for a wide variety of electronic and wireless delivery methods. Built on open standards and distributed architecture, TeleScope Enterprise offers a robust and open API that allows third-party technologies and legacy systems to seamlessly integrate into the TeleScope environment. TeleScope supports over 300 file formats ranging from graphics and text, to audio and video.

"The publishing industry has made great strides towards the adoption of asset management systems to help streamline their business processes and support cross-media efforts," said Hassan Kotob, President and CEO of North Plains Systems. "After Harcourt's detailed evaluation of asset management solutions, we are delighted that such a respected industry leader has selected TeleScope Enterprise. North Plains Systems looks forward to a long and successful partnership with Harcourt Education.

About North Plains Systems, Inc..
Founded in 1994, North Plains Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of digital asset management solutions. Its pioneering technology, focus, and vision have been recognized through out the content management industry, including analyst Frost & Sullivan, with their 2005 Company of the Year award. Today, over 400 customers benefit from North Plains' expertise in delivering industry defining solutions for multi-channel publishing, broadcast automation, video enhanced learning, marketing automation and collaboration and brand management. Customers include Boeing, Feld Entertainment, Harcourt, HarperCollins Publishers, International Monetary Fund, Ogilvy and Mather, Publicis Groupe, Relizon, Thomson Learning, Viacom and Warner Bros. For further information please visit the North Plains website.

About Harcourt Education
Harcourt Education is a leading US K-12 education provider. Companies within Harcourt Education include Harcourt School Publishers (K-6 leader, with particular strengths in science, reading, math and social studies); Holt, Reinhart & Winston (major 6-12 grade publisher, leading in literature, language, arts and science, growing prominence in math and social studies); Steck-Vaughn and Rigby (supplemental materials); Harcourt Trade (fiction and non-fiction) and Harcourt Educational Measurement (achievement, aptitude and guidance testing services for K-12, notably the Stanford Achievement Test). For further information, please visit www.harcourt.com.

Since July 2001, Harcourt Education has been a member of the Reed Elsevier plc group.