ProQuest
The ProQuest Company is an American host of Ann Arbor, Michigan, which specializes in microform and electronic publication. ProQuest provides its subscribers to around 9000 titles from the past 500 years. The majority of North American universities published his dissertation in UMI, a division of the company.
History
In 1938, Eugene Power, the company as University Microfilms and archived documents in the British Museum on microfilm. Powers recognized a niche market in the publication of doctoral theses on microfiche, which was cheaper for students as a print publication (see Electronic dissertation). As this market grew, the company began abzufilmen also newspapers and other periodicals. ProQuest Dissertations published so many that its collection of digital dissertations was declared the official custodian of the Library of Congress in 1999.
In his autobiography, Edition of one Power reports on the development of the company, such as as University Microfilms worked with the forerunner of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War. The work consisted for the most part is abzufilmen maps and European newspapers, so that they could be transported cheaply and inconspicuously over the sea.
In 1967 the company was acquired by Xerox and then bought in 1985 by Bell & Howell. The name of the company changed to this place several times: from University Microfilms to Xerox University Microfilms to University Microfilms International, UMI abbreviated. In the 80s, UMI CD -ROMs began bibliographic databases with abstracts and indices of various magazines to produce and later offer online subscriptions of these databases. In the 90s Microform media appeared with the new available electronic media not to compete. The company tried to survive by it forced its Electronic Trading with access to online versions of current periodicals, which was settled mainly with schools, universities and libraries. In 1995, UMI selected databases available online for free, which is the beginning of ProQuest.
Bell & Howell in 2001 changed its name because of the level of awareness of ProQuest ProQuest Company and to the UMI department changed the name of Bell & Howell Information and Learning (since 1999) 2001 ProQuest Information and Learning.
2004 ProQuest bought the start-up company Serials Solutions, which offered access management and search services for contents of third party companies.
End of 2006, took over the Cambridge Information Group, ProQuest and merged it with the in-house Cambridge Scientific Abstracts ProQuest CSA.
In mid-2008 took over the host ProQuest Dialog from Thomson Reuters.
In early 2011 took over the ProQuest e- book provider Ebrary.
Offer
ProQuest offers the following databases:
- Periodical Contents Index
- CSA Illumina.
Competitors of the company are, for example, EBSCO Publishing, LexisNexis, Ovid Technologies and Dialogue ( Thomson).