We have long known that one of our best potential business opportunities lay in transferring our print directories, bench books and other database-oriented products from print to online. Let's face it, in a world of the always on and always available internet, and with the development of Google and other search engines, an online directory just makes more sense than print. With online listings, we can provide more value to our users and create more upsell opportunities for our advertisers.

So it has been a source of some frustration around here that our previous relationships with directory software vendors have been difficult, to put it mildly. We have not been able to convert many of our existing print directories to online in the way in which we wanted to, and it felt like we were missing the boat in terms of both serving our readers and selling more advertising. Until now.

Here's an announcement that Jill Windwer forwarded about the launch of two directories this week as part of a new relationship with a directory software developer. Here's what Jill had to say:

"I am happy to announce the successful re-launch of our two directories --The Minority Law Journal and The LTN Resource Guide. This launch is an important achievement because our directories now support capabilities that were previously unavailable. Highlights of our new directories include:

E-commerce Integration – Along with the already existing invoice process as method of payment, we are now capable of processing Credit Cards using our secure online payment process.

More Admin Control – Administrators have more control in managing user accounts and products; an important change that leaves us less dependent on outside vendors for updates. Also improvements have been made in the process of exporting directories into print.

Centralized Hosting for our Directories – Our IT team has built a secure internal hosting environment for our directories that we can leverage in the future roll-out of all other directories.

Updated User Interface – Web pages have been redesigned to be more current and make information retrieval easier.

Please take a look for yourself and let us know what you think.

Minority Law Journal Directory: http://tinyurl.com/qkpx2f

LTN Resource Guide Directory: http://tinyurl.com/plfhz4