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 th ...
. 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 sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
,
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, and
school libraries
A school library (or a school library media center) is a library within a school where students, staff, and often, parents of a Public school (government funded), public or private school have access to a variety of resources. The goal of the ...
, 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 supernatural, ...
,
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
, 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 soc ...
.
Founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 by
Frederick Gale Ruffner Jr., the company was acquired by the
International Thomson Organization
International Thomson Organization (ITO) was a holding company for interests in publishing, travel, and natural resources, that existed from 1978 to 1989. It was formed as a reorganisation of the Thomson Organization, which had been founded by Roy ...
(later the
Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation Ltd (ITOL) and Thomson Newspapers. In 2008, it purchased Reuters Group to fo ...
) in 1985 before its 2007 sale to Cengage.
History
![Gale-ALA-booth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Gale-ALA-booth.jpg)
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 Rawli ...
Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and
G. K. Hall
G. K. Hall & Co. is an American book publisher based in Boston. It was founded sometime in the late 1950s by Garrison Kent Hall (1917–1973), who also had been an accountant. The firm initially, in the late 1950s through the 1960s, produced cata ...
) 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 publ ...
in 1998;
Macmillan USA 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 States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
-based
K. G. Saur Verlag
K. G. Saur Verlag is a German publisher that specializes in reference information for libraries. The publishing house, founded by Karl Saur, is owned by Walter de Gruyter and is based in Munich.
In 1987, K. G. Saur was acquired by Reed Intern ...
, 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 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 grades ...
market with several imprints, including U·X·L,
Greenhaven Press
The Rosen Publishing Group is an American publisher for educational books for readers from ages pre-Kindergarten through grade 12. It was founded in 1950 under the name "Richards Rosen Press" and is located in New York City. The company changed i ...
, 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 Jo ...
'' published by Scribner's
*''
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
The ''Dictionary of Scientific Biography'' is a scholarly reference work that was published from 1970 through 1980 by publisher Charles Scribner's Sons, with main editor the science historian Charles Gillispie, from Princeton University. It consi ...
'' published by Scribner's
*''
Encyclopaedia Judaica
The ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' is a 22-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, langu ...
'' published by Gale
*''
Encyclopedia of Associations
The ''Encyclopedia of Associations'' (''EA'') is a comprehensive directory of more than 20,000 associations, societies, and other non-profit membership organizations in the United States of America.
Originally titled the ''Encyclopedia of America ...
'' 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 headquar ...
owned by Gale (inactive)
*''
New Catholic Encyclopedia'' published by Gale
*
Questia Online Library
Questia was an online commercial digital repository of books and articles that had an academic orientation, with a particular emphasis on books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences. All the text in all the Questia books and a ...
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