Farlex Introduces Massive Periodical Collection on TheFreeLibrary.com

HUNTINGDON VALLEY, Pa., Jan. 3, 2007—For Farlex, Inc., 2006 was an eventful year. The privately-held company, based in Huntingdon Valley, PA, publishes the hugely popular reference site, www.TheFreeDictionary.com, which offers access to a host of valuable reference materials including a legal dictionary and computing dictionary, as well as the Columbia, Wikipedia, and Hutchinson Encyclopedias.

Farlex marked the start of '06 with the ambitious launch of TheFreeDictionary's personal homepage, a user-friendly interface that has attracted a loyal following. The free, fully customizable format can be accessed from any modern browser and does not require any installation, download, or additional software. It has been lauded for its clarity, organization and versatility—users can simply add, remove, drag, and drop content windows containing features that are updated daily, including a horoscope, numerous vocabulary games, a weather report, and a stock market tracker.

In March of 2006, Farlex partnered with Whitepages.com to launch a new address lookup feature that provides users quick access to WhitePages.com's up-to-date address, phone, and map information. The button joined TheFreeDictionary's other internet search options, including EBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoo! Later in the year, Farlex added Yellow Pages content from SuperPages.com.

By December, TheFreeDictionary.com had welcomed its 450,000,000th visitor, and Farlex had supplemented the site's homepage offerings with an innovative new mail feature that gives users direct and instant access to their email inboxes, a picture option that allows users to upload their favorite photos for display directly on their homepage, and an expanded syndicated news directory that offers hundreds of RSS feeds from dozens of reputable publications, websites, and news sources.

As they celebrate 2006's undeniable achievements, Farlex's co-founders, Nick Simonov and Steve Boymel, are focused on the future. Simonov attributes the company's success to this kind of emphasis on constant innovation, as well as attentiveness to user feedback. "The way that TheFreeDictionary had taken shape is a reflection of the needs of its audience. We launch features in response to user requests, and our growth, especially over the course of the past year, is directly attributable to the fact that we are receptive and flexible," he says.

In keeping with this philosophy, Simonov and Boymel are ushering in the new year with the re-launch of TheFreeDictionary's sister site, www.TheFreeLibrary.com, which thus far offered full-text versions of classic literary works by hundreds of celebrated authors. Farlex is expanding the site to include a massive collection of periodicals—over 2 million articles dating back to 1984. Newly-published articles will be added to the site daily from about 200 leading publications covering Business and Industry, Communications, Entertainment, Health, Humanities, Law, Government, Politics, Recreation and Leisure, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences.

Until now, TheFreeLibrary complemented TheFreeDictionary in a somewhat limited manner. When a user searched for a word's definition on TheFreeDictionary, the definition page would include helpful usage examples in the form of "references in classic literature," taken from TheFreeLibrary's collection. Now, says Boymel, the two sites will be more fully integrated, as TheFreeLibrary becomes its own periodical reference library. "We expect to see a lot more traffic between the two sites, as TheFreeLibrary becomes a larger source of information that will supplement TheFreeDictionary's already enormous collection. Anyone looking for information on a certain topic can now take advantage of TheFreeLibrary's periodicals as well as TheFreeDictionary's encyclopedias."

 

About TheFreeDictionary.com:

Launched in the spring of 2003, TheFreeDictionary.com has quickly become one of the most comprehensive reference resources on the Web. From its beginnings as a simple dictionary of everyday terms, TheFreeDictionary.com has grown to include medical, legal, and computer dictionaries, a thesaurus, several encyclopedias, a literature reference library, and a search engine. A prime online vehicle for active information seekers, TheFreeDictionary.com has been accessed by more than 450 million visitors.

 

About TheFreeLibrary.com:

Launched in the spring of 2003, TheFreeLibrary.com provides immediate access to some of the world's greatest works of classic literature, while simultaneously serving as an excellent resource for building vocabulary and learning English as a second language. Simply double-click any word in the text to obtain an instant dictionary definition. TheFreeLibrary contains over 400 great books, more than 10,000 pages of classic literature, information on over a hundred of the world's most famous authors, and reference information and quotations. As of January 2007, TheFreeLibrary has been expanded to include up to date articles from about 200 periodicals and magazines dating from 1984. New articles are added to the site every day from about 200 leading publications covering Business and Industry, Communications, Entertainment, Health, Humanities, Law, Government, Politics, Recreation and Leisure, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences.

 

About Farlex, Inc.:

Farlex, Inc. (www.farlex.com) is an independent, privately held provider of online reference products based in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Founded in 2004, Farlex, Inc. provides innovative, easy-to-use reference and learning tools. Farlex's flagship websites, TheFreeDictionary.com and TheFreeLibrary.com, contain over five million pages of books, periodicals, and reference information from the world's most respected sources.