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. The companies’ complementary content assets will enable libraries, faculty and students to improve research and learning outcomes.
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.
“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.”
The business, which will be known as “Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company,” will be led by Stephen Rhind-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.”
Offering together ProQuest’s innovative content and research solutions – as well as its market-leading library management and discovery resources – with Alexander Street’s unique video, music and historical collections will significantly enrich the research experience. For example, as ProQuest makes available Alexander Street content on its award-winning platform, users will have seamless access to relevant content in multiple formats – video, journal articles, news, dissertations, ebooks – improving discoverability. Librarians will be able to acquire robust collections that span text and video and are available via multiple purchase models, including PDA, subscription and perpetual access.
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.
Read more about how ProQuest and Alexander Street will be better together in this blog post from Kurt Sanford.
