Gale (publisher)

Gale is an educational publishing company based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, 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, Michigan in 1954 by Frederick Gale Ruffner, it was acquired by Thomson in 1985.

History

In 1999, Thomson Gale acquired Macmillan Reference USA (including Scribner's Reference, Thorndike Press, Schirmer, Twayne Publishers, and G. K. Hall) from Pearson (which 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 Walter de Gruyter in 2006.