Electric Paper in Harcourt deal

COMPUTER training company Thirdforce has strengthened its position in the educational market by agreeing a deal with a major British book publisher.

The company said yesterday that its Electric Paper subsidiary would form a joint venture with Harcourt Education International, a division of publicly-quoted publishing giant Reed Elsevier, to provide combined book and CD-ROM packages to classrooms.

Harcourt is Britain’s leading educational publisher, whose brand names Heinemann, Ginn and Rigby are familiar to teachers. The new joint venture is believed to be the first of its kind and will allow the two companies to provide complementary material to be used in teaching computer literacy skills.