HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full text online archive owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, for thousands of

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

s, magazines,

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

s, newswires,

trade magazine A trade magazine, also called a trade journal or trade paper (colloquially or disparagingly a trade rag), is a magazine or newspaper whose target audience is people who work in a particular trade or industry. The collective term for t ...

s, and encyclopedias in English. It was headquartered in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. In late 2018, the archive was shut down.

History

The company was established in August 2002 after Patrick Spain, who had just sold Hoover's, which he had co-founded, bought eLibrary and

Encyclopedia.com Encyclopedia.com (also known as HighBeam Encyclopedia) is an online encyclopedia. It aggregates information from other published dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference works including pictures and videos. History The website was launched by ...

from

Tucows Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent bus ...

. The new company was called Alacritude, LLC (a combination of Alacrity and Attitude). ELibrary had a library of 1,200 newspaper, magazine and radio/TV transcript archives that were generally not freely available. Original investors included Prism Opportunity Fund of Chicago and 1 to 1 Ventures of Stamford,

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

. Spain stated, "There was a glaring gap between free search like

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

and high-end offerings like LexisNexis and Factiva." Later in 2002, it bought Researchville.com. By 2003, it had increased its archive base to articles from 2,600 publishers. In 2004, it was renamed HighBeam Research. In 2005, it increased its publisher base to 3,500 publishers. In 2006,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

, Knight Ridder and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' archives were added. In 2008, it was purchased by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage. Highbeam featured many articles by the UK based Trinity Mirror Group. Until late 2018, Highbeam Research was a partner in the Womensforum network and a major content provider for the ''WomensForum'' women's issues research website. Highbeam Research shut down in late 2018 after 16 years.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:HighBeam Research 2002 establishments in the United States Cengage Companies based in Chicago Online mass media companies of the United States Internet search engines Online archives of the United States Mass media companies established in 2002 Internet properties established in 2002 2008 mergers and acquisitions