Strong MgII Absorption Systems in QSOs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release

We have constructed samples of low-ionization metal absorption-line systems selected for the strength of their MgII lambda2796 lines from the SDSS EDR. There are 640 absorption systems in our unbiased sample with lambda2796 REW > 1.0 A detected at 5 sigma and with redshifts 0.37 < z < 2.27. This sample is an order of magnitude larger than previous similarly selected samples. In this contribution, we present preliminary results on the statistical properties of the sample.