Alexander Street, a leading provider of streaming videos and music as well as award-winning primary source collections to libraries around the world, has joined the ProQuest family of companies.
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The acquisition brings together Alexander Street’s valuable video, music and unique primary source collections with ProQuest’s extensive aggregation of content, which encompasses nearly a billion searchable items in 20 academic disciplines as well as 270 million pages of historical primary source collections. Together, the companies will deliver an extraordinary and diverse range of content that will seamlessly connect text and video, improving contextual and serendipitous discovery. Alexander Street Homepage (June 22, 2016)
“Streaming media is a growing part of the research and learning experience. We see an opportunity to further amplify its usefulness for researchers and learners by connecting it with text, introducing a broader range of relevant and authoritative content,” said Kurt Sanford, ProQuest CEO. “This is a fantastic combination that brings together Alexander Street’s unique video and primary source content with ProQuest’s extensive aggregated content, books and workflow and research tools. Together, we will enable the development of better, more robust resources for our customers around the world.”
[Our emphasis] The business, which will be known as “Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company,” will be led by StephenRhind-Tutt, its current president. It will maintain its headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Rhind-Tutt joins ProQuest, reporting to Rafael Sidi, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ProQuest Information Solutions. ProQuest Holdings is acquiring the business through its subsidiary R.R. Bowker.
“This acquisition is going to enable Alexander Street to fulfill its mission to ‘make silent voices heard’ more effectively than ever before,” said Mr. Rhind-Tutt. “I’m hugely excited by the potential new products we can create together.”
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Alexander Street’s recently launched “Open Music Library,” an open network of digital resources for the study of music, will also be enhanced, further developing this unique combination of community collaboration and premium and publicly-available content.
“With Alexander Street joining the ProQuest family, we’re able to invest in accelerating the vision and mission of a unique and innovative company,” said Andrew Snyder, ProQuest Chairman and CEO of Cambridge Information Group. “It’s good news for researchers and libraries. As we connect the expertise and content of these two companies, the solutions from both get better, more robust and will deliver greater value. The opportunities to advance the work of researchers and our customers are truly exciting.”
The companies are committed to a smooth transition, providing the highest quality customer care and support to both ProQuest and Alexander Street customers. Customers will continue to have the information solutions they know and trust from both companies with no disruption to their libraries, researchers or institutions.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
