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 articles were available to subscribers; the site also included integrated research tools. As of December 21, 2020, it ceased operations.
Company history
Questia, based in Chicago, Illinois, was founded in 1998 and purchased by
Gale, part of
Cengage Learning
Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders ...
, in January 2010.
Service
Questia offered some information free of charge, including several
public domain works, publication information,
tables of contents
A table of contents, usually headed simply Contents and abbreviated informally as TOC, is a list, usually found on a page before the start of a written work, of its chapter or section titles or brief descriptions with their commencing page numbe ...
, the first page of every chapter,
Boolean
Any kind of logic, function, expression, or theory based on the work of George Boole is considered Boolean.
Related to this, "Boolean" may refer to:
* Boolean data type, a form of data with only two possible values (usually "true" and "false" ...
searches of the contents of the library, and short bibliographies of available books and articles on some 6500 topics.
Questia did not sell ownership to books or
ebook
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
s, but rather sold monthly or annual subscriptions that allowed temporary online reading access to all 94000+ books, and 14 million + journal, magazine, and newspaper articles in their collection. The books were selected by academic librarians as credible, authoritative works in their respective areas. The librarians also compiled about 7000 reference bibliographies on frequently researched topics. The library was strongest in books and journal articles in the social sciences and humanities, with many older historical texts. Original
pagination was maintained. The Questia service also featured tools to automatically create citations and bibliographies, helping writers to properly cite the materials.
A limitation to the Questia library was that new additions were available in a "beta" version only. Unlike Questia's earlier publications, these prevented users from copying text directly from the website, although one page from the publications could be printed free of charge. A charge was made for printing a range of pages.
Questia launched their Q&A blog on September 21, 2011. Q&A was divided into "Education news," "Student resources" and "Subjects" categories. "Subjects" was further broken down so readers could find specific content based on their academic needs.
Questia released an iPhone app in 2011, which was extended to the iPad the following year.
Then in January 2013 Questia launched tutorials, including videos and quizzes, to teach students the research process.
Criticism
Questia was criticized in 2005 by librarian Steven J. Bell for referring to itself as an academic library, when it concentrated on the liberal arts and treated users as customers rather than students. Moreover, Bell argued, Questia did not employ academic librarians or faculty. Although some of its employees had advanced library degrees, they did not work or collaborate with faculty to develop collections that served distinctive student populations.
[Steven J. Bell]
"Electronic libraries can't be academic"
'' Chronicle for Higher Education'' September 30, 2005
On November 24, 2020, Cengage sent email to Questia's subscribers – including those who had bought a lifetime subscription before Cengage purchased Questia – to the effect that Cengage would be closing down Questia as of December 21, 2020, thus nullifying all subscription contracts while continuing to offer the same sort of service directly through Cengage.
Questia followed
Highbeam Research in exiting
Wikipedia's program to enable editors free access to
paywall
A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...
ed research websites and
electronic publications. Source links to Questia's library material on Wikipedia
become unreachable when Questia's parent shut down Questia in 2021.
See also
*
List of digital library projects
This is a list of digital library projects.
See also
* Bibliographic database
* List of academic databases and search engines
* List of online databases
* List of online encyclopedias
* List of open-access journals
* List of search engines
Re ...
*
List of academic databases and search engines
This article contains a representative list of notable databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, institutional repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Questia
Internet properties established in 1998
Commercial digital libraries
Full-text scholarly online databases
1998 establishments in Illinois
American digital libraries
Internet properties disestablished in 2020
2020 disestablishments in Illinois