Important Update from ProQuest Information and Learning President, David "Skip" Prichard (fwd)

[Fred Shapiro]

For those of you interested in ProQuest's online historical text products,
see below for an update on the extremely serious plight of the company.

Fred Shapiro



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 15:48:52 -0700
From: ProQuest <ProQuestmail99 at il.proquest.com>
To: Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at yale.edu>
Subject: Important Update from ProQuest Information and Learning President,
     David "Skip" Prichard



I want to speak to you directly and frankly about the latest development in ProQuest's progress. Today, ProQuest Company outlined the key findings of its independent investigation of its previously disclosed accounting irregularities. All of our customers have been extremely supportive throughout this year. This information is important to you because it confirms that you have been justified in your support: the problems we have experienced are narrowly related to specific accounting issues and a specific individual. The facts sustain the essential integrity of the Company and of its Associates.

In a Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Company confirms the scope and discusses the cause of those accounting irregularities. As you already know, ProQuest Company itself discovered the problem, promptly reported it to the appropriate regulatory bodies, and the Company's Audit Committee quickly initiated the independent investigation led by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, & Flom LLC. The investigation was vast, involving the review of more than 3.6 million pages of documents.

The investigation found that the evidence strongly indicates:


-- the individual formerly holding the senior finance role in ProQuest I&L took actions and made manual journal entries that were unsupported and inappropriate;
-- this highly trusted member of the leadership team acted independently- that is, no other officer or director had direct knowledge of or involvement in these accounting entries;
-- ProQuest's internal controls should be tighter to prevent this kind of misstatement;
-- no one in management created this situation by applying undue pressure to attain certain results.
The individual responsible for making and directing these manual journal entries has been terminated. The Company has implemented and continues to implement process changes to eliminate the possibility of such errors occurring in the future.

I want to be clear that these issues do not degrade our ongoing operational performance for you and your end-users. As always, our number one priority is to create information solutions that meet your needs and exceed your expectations. In 2006, we are investing $50 million in product capital to do just that.

Both customers and critics agree that ProQuest has created a number of exciting new products as well as enhancements to already well-established products this year. If you have not yet had an opportunity to talk with your ProQuest representative about these solutions - including Historical Annual Reports, ProQuest Genealogy Center resources, British Periodicals, and FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals - I think you will be pleased when you do. All have won praise from customers and the press for their depth of content, for their elegance, and for their contributions to scholarly research.

ProQuest also continues to evolve its aggregated databases and we have announced that non-embargoed, full-text content from Springer Science and Business Media is being added to ProQuest's online databases. Further, ProQuest is expanding its partnership with Getty Images to provide the largest image archive available to the library and educational markets. And, public library patrons will benefit from an important enhancement to ProQuest Historical Newspapers: an upgrade providing a special graphical interface to help novice researchers. We've also announced that we're expanding our support for library education by making our services available to library students at no charge during the school term.

We're not done by a long shot, and you can expect to see additional compelling solutions from ProQuest yet this year.

ProQuest Information and Learning is in the business of helping researchers find answers. We do this through superior and highly creative products. We do this by supporting librarians and the roles of the library. We do this through a candid and ongoing dialog with you. Thank you for your support and advice--they are the spark behind the hundreds of compelling research solutions we've created together, as well as those we have yet to create.

I look forward to our continued collaboration with great anticipation.


Skip

David "Skip" Prichard

President




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