Banta Corp., a printing and digital imaging firm, agreed to provide education publishing giant Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, digital content management services through its Banta Integrated Media unit.
Banta, Cambridge, MA, said this month it plans to develop and host two online education programs for Houghton Mifflin's college division and McDougal Littell high school publishing group. Banta will provide technology designed to let college professors produce customized course materials from selections published by the college division and third parties. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Through its McDougal Littell unit, Banta hopes to explore organizing, customizing and delivering curriculum materials to teachers in an electronic format, the company said. In addition, the company will carry out a needs-assessment program on Houghton Mifflin's textbook and Web-site production workflow.
The pact follows quickly on Banta's announcement that School Specialty Inc., Appleton, WI, the largest U.S. educational supplies cataloger, purchased Banta's Centrus digital content management system.
The Centrus system is designed to streamline the print and electronic media production processes. It creates a centralized content repository for storing digital information that is used to make text, photos, illustrations and other information for print materials, Web sites and CD-ROMs.
School Specialty supplies nontextbook education materials. The company offers about 60,000 products through seven catalogs, some of which are printed by Banta. School Specialty's Centrus system will connect three catalog production facilities and business units through a single server.
