| Parent company | Cengage Learning |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1954 |
| Founder | Frederick Gale Ruffner[1] |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Farmington Hills, Michigan |
| Official website | gale.cengage.com |
Gale is an educational publishing company based in Farmington Hills, Michigan,[2] the United States, in the western suburbs of Detroit. It was part of the Thomson Learning division of the Thomson Corporation, a Canadian company, but became part of Cengage Learning in 2007.
The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale Group, is active in research and educational publishing for public and academic libraries, schools and businesses. The company may be best known for its full-text magazine and newspaper database InfoTrac and other online databases accessible from schools and libraries, as well as multi-volume reference works, especially in the areas of religion, history and social science.
Founded in Detroit in 1954 by Frederick Gale Ruffner, it was acquired by Thomson in 1985.[3]
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In 1999, Thomson Gale acquired Macmillan Reference USA (including Scribner's Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and G. K. Hall) from Pearson (who had acquired it from Simon & Schuster in 1998; Macmillan USA was purchased by Simon & Schuster in 1994). In 2000 it acquired the Munich-based K.G. Saur Verlag, but then sold it to Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG in 2006.
On October 25, 2006 Thomson Corporation announced that it intended to wholly divest 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 and OMERS Capital Partners for $7.75 billion and the name was changed from Thomson Learning to Cengage Learning on July 24, 2007.[4]
In October 2007, Cengage Learning announced the appointment of Patrick C. Sommers as president of Gale, effective October 22, 2007.[5]
Gale print imprints include the reference brands Primary Source Microfilm, Scholarly Resources Inc., Schirmer Reference, St. James Press, The TAFT Group and Twayne Publishers. 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 market with several imprints, including U·X·L, Greenhaven Press, KidHaven Press, Lucent Books, and others.
Gale also owns large print publishers Walker Large Print and Wheeler Publishing.
In 2008, Gale published The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, which included an article on Zionism by Noel Ignatiev. On Dec. 17, 2009 the publisher responded to "concerns from several organizations" over "the accuracy of, and support for, certain statements in the Zionism article" by announcing the appointment of an independent committee to investigate "the factual accuracy, scholarly basis, coverage, scope, and balance of every article." In a further response to the Ignatiev article, Gale published a 10-part composite article, "Nationalism and Ethnicity," which includes evaluations of cultural nationalism in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East, and Pan-Arabism, in addition to having a new article on Zionism available free of cost to all purchasers of the encyclopedia.[6]
Gale provides access to over 600 online databases, some of which are updated daily. Some databases have overlapping information, but are targeted towards different markets such as K–12 schools, or public libraries. Clients chose which database they wish to subscribe to, such as:
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