| Status | Active |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1953 |
| Successor | Eric Boehm |
| Headquarters location | Santa Barbara, California |
| Key people | Ron Boehm (CEO); Becky Snyder (President) |
| Publication types | Books, Databases, Magazines |
| Imprints | ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth |
| Official website | www.abc-clio.com |
ABC-CLIO is a publisher of reference works for the study of history and social studies in academic, secondary school, and public library settings.
The company was founded as the American Bibliographic Company in 1956. It published the history bibliographic and abstract compendium Historical Abstracts, one of its flagship products, from 1956 to 2007. During the 1960s, a sister bibliographic and abstract publication on American history, America: History and Life, was added. A subsidiary, Clio Press, began to publish historical reference encyclopedia and other books during the 1970s, and was later folded back into the company as a whole.
By the 2000s, ABC-CLIO's flagship products had become leading online databases for researching many topics in the field of history. The company's reference books had won numerous awards, and the company started a series of subject-related online databases for secondary school use. In 2004, the company acquired the quarterly historical journal, Journal of the West, which has been published since 1962. The company's continuing mission is to publish high quality materials to serve the historical profession, and facilitate the teaching of history.
It sold Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life to EBSCO Publishing in 2007.[1] The same year, it acquired the Greenwood Publishing Group from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.