Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in
Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...
. It has been a division of
Cengage since 2007.
The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Group, is active in research and educational publishing for
public
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...
,
academic, and
school libraries, and businesses. The company is known for its full-text magazine and newspaper databases, Gale OneFile (formerly known as Infotrac), and other online databases subscribed by libraries, as well as multi-volume reference works, especially in the areas of
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
,
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
, and
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...
.
Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 by
Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr., the company was acquired by the
International Thomson Organization (later the
Thomson Corporation) in 1985 before its 2007 sale to Cengage.
History
In 1998, Gale Research merged with Information Access Company and Primary Source Media, two companies also owned by Thomson, to form the Gale Group. Thomson has acquired Information Access Company (publisher of
InfoTrac) in 1995 and Primary Source Media (formerly named Research Publications) in 1979.
In 1999, Thomson Gale acquired Macmillan Library Reference (including
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Ra ...
Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and
G. K. Hall) from Pearson (which had acquired it from
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publi ...
in 1998;
Macmillan USA
Macmillan Inc. is a defunct American book publishing company. Originally established as the American division of the British Macmillan Publishers, the two were later separated and acquired by other companies, with the remnants of the original Am ...
was purchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994). In 2000 it acquired the
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...
-based
K. G. Saur Verlag, but then sold it to
Walter de Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.
History
The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...
in 2006.
On October 25, 2006, Thomson Corporation announced that it intended to wholly
divest the Thomson Learning division, because, in the words of Thomson CEO Richard Harrington, "it does not fit with our long-term strategic vision." Thomson has said that it expected this sale to generate approximately $5 billion. Thomson Learning was bought by a private equity consortium consisting of
Apax Partners
Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of December 2017, the firm, including its ...
and
OMERS Capital Partners for $7.75 billion and the name was changed from Thomson Learning to
Cengage Learning on July 24, 2007.
Patrick C. Sommers was president of Gale from October 22, 2007, until he retired in 2010.
Products
Gale produces hundreds of products, such as Gale Academic OneFile,
Biography and Genealogy Master Index, General OneFile, General Reference Center, Sabin Americana (based on Sabin's ''
Bibliotheca Americana''), and World History Collection.
Gale print imprints include the reference brands Primary Source Media, Scholarly Resources Inc., Schirmer Reference, St. James Press, The TAFT Group and Twayne Publishers, among others. Five Star Publishing is Gale's fiction imprint, with hundreds of books in print in the Western, Romance, Mystery and Science Fiction & Fantasy genres. Gale also sells into the
K–12
K–12, from kindergarten to 12th grade, is an American English expression that indicates the range of years of publicly supported primary and secondary education found in the United States, which is similar to publicly supported school grade ...
market with several imprints, including U·X·L,
Greenhaven Press, KidHaven Press, Lucent Books, and others.
Gale also owns large print publishers Christian Large Print and Wheeler Publishing.
See also
*''
Contemporary Authors'' published by Gale
*''
Dictionary of Literary Biography'' published by Gale
*''
Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The ''Dictionary of the Middle Ages'' is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Jos ...
'' published by Scribner's
*''
Dictionary of Scientific Biography'' published by Scribner's
*''
Encyclopaedia Judaica'' published by Gale
*''
Encyclopedia of Associations'' published by Gale
*
HighBeam Research
HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full text online archive owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, for thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines, and encyclopedias in English. It was head ...
owned by Gale (inactive)
*''
New Catholic Encyclopedia'' published by Gale
*
Questia Online Library owned by Gale (inactive)
References
External links
Gale website
;Gale-owned sites and services
Gale Directory Library – dozens of print directories on a digital platform
Books & Authors– indexed database of fiction and nonfiction book titles
{{Authority control
1954 establishments in Michigan
American companies established in 1954
Book publishing companies based in Michigan
Cengage
Companies based in Oakland County, Michigan
Bibliographic database providers
Commercial digital libraries
Online publishing companies of the United States
Publishing companies established in 1954
1985 mergers and acquisitions
American digital libraries