Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in

Farmington Hills, Michigan Farmington Hills is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northwestern Metro Detroit, suburb of Detroit, Farmington Hills is located roughly from downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 United States censu ...

, United States, west of

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

. It has been a division of

Cengage Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for higher education, K–12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(June 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders 2 ...

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 An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

, and

school libraries A school library (or a school media center) is a library within a school where students, and sometimes their parents and staff have access to borrow a variety of resources, often literary or digital. The goal of a school library or media cente ...

, and for 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 a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

history History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...

, and

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

. Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 by

Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr. Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr. (August 26, 1926 – August 13, 2014) was an American publisher who is known as the founder of Gale Research. He died August 12, 2014, at the age of 87. Publishing career Ruffner founded Gale Research in 1954 while wo ...

, the company was acquired by the

International Thomson Organization International Thomson Organization (ITO) was a Canadian holding company that was active from 1978 to 1989, with interests in publishing, travel, and natural resources. It was created as a part of a corporate restructuring of the Thomson Organizat ...

(later the

Thomson Corporation Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organization and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to form Thomson Reut ...

) 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 InfoTrac is a family of full-text databases of content from academic journals and general magazines, of which the majority are targeted to the English-speaking North American market. As is typical of online proprietary databases, various forms ...

) 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 that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjo ...

Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and G. K. Hall) from Pearson (which had acquired it from

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

in 1998;

Macmillan USA Macmillan Inc. (also known as Macmillan US, and formerly The Macmillan Company) was an American book publishing company originally established as the American division of the British Macmillan Publishers. The two were later separated and acquire ...

was purchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994). In 2000 it acquired the

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

-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 In finance and economics, divestment or divestiture is the reduction of some kind of asset for financial, ethical, or political objectives or sale of an existing business by a firm. A divestment is the opposite of an investment. Divestiture is a ...

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 March 2024, the firm had raised and adv ...

and

OMERS Capital Partners The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) is a Canadian public pension fund, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. OMERS is a defined benefit, jointly sponsored, multi-employer public pension plan created in 1962 by Ontario provinci ...

for $7.75 billion and the name was changed from Thomson Learning to

Cengage Learning Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for higher education, K–12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(June 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders 2 ...

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 A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curric ...

, 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 English language expression that indicates the range of years of publicly supported primary and secondary education found in the United States and Canada, which is similar to publicly supported sch ...

market with several imprints, including U·X·L. Gale also owns large print publishers Christian Large Print and Wheeler Publishing.

References

External links

* 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

History

Products

See also

References

External links