History

• Information Access Company was one of the leading publishers of online-accessible databases since the early 1980s.
• It was acquired by publisher Ziff-Davis.
• Later, when the Ziff family decided to sell of the publishing firm, IAC was sold to the Thompson PLC, a giant publishing conglomerate that also bought Gale Publishing and Dialog.
• Gale was a long-time publisher of reference books, later moving into the production of online databases largely based on their book publishing.
  • Example: Encyclopedia of Associations
• IAC and Gale have been merged into the Gale Group, remaining a subsidiary of Thompson Corp. The IAC databases are now marked under the name InfoTrac.
• Most of the IAC operations except for technical services moved from Foster City, CA, to Farmington Hills, MI, near Detroit, and Connecticut.

InfoTrac's (Gale Group) Success

• InfoTrac has been the most successful vendor of online databases to the academic, public, and special libraries market because:
  • It created so many databases and combined and recombined information in them to make new databases and other information products.
    • Examples:
      • Records (citations, abstracts, and full-text records) from some journals in the specialized Computer Publications Database are included in InfoTrac's General Reference (Magazine Index), Academic, Business Reference, and other databases.
    • InfoTrac reconfigures and tailors combinations of records to create databases for specific markets, including school (TOM and SuperTOM), public libraries (Magazine Index/General Reference), college/university (the various Academic DBs).
• It has the most successful marketing of all of the database producers. For example, its DBs are available through DIALOG and other database utilities as well as directly to the libraries, companies, and, in the near future, the public.
• InfoTrac has the advantage of economies of scale.

Major Gale Group InfoTrac databases:

• The major databases include:
  • Academic Index
  • Magazine Index (General Reference Center)
  • Business Reference Center
  • Health Reference Center
  • Trade and Industry
  • Prompt

Database Formats

• Gale Group successfully markets the various databases in several media and online formats, including:
  • Media
    • CD-ROM
    • Tape Reels
  • Online
    • Telnet-accessible
    • Web-accessible
    • Through Dialog