HOUSTON (January 6, 2005) -- Questia Media Inc., the world’s largest online academic library, today announced it will add more than 1,000 Cambridge University Press titles to its extensive online collection of 50,000 academically vetted, full-text books and 400,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. The agreement further expands Questia’s scholarly collection focused in the humanities and social sciences, and will provide researchers and individuals with immediate access to current Cambridge University Press titles – all published between 1998 and 2002.
“For more than six years, Questia has been leading the effort to create a massive, first-rate collection of copyrighted content and make it easily accessible and searchable online. Our agreement with Cambridge University Press adds current titles from one of the world’s best publishers to our library,” said Troy Williams, president and CEO of Questia Media. “Recent announcements by Google and the Library of Congress have brought national attention to large digitization projects of public domain material. While these projects are both welcome and important, they do not solve the more pressing need to make copyrighted content – content that still has economic value – available to individuals online. The public domain comprises books published prior to 1923; and although most of these books may soon be freely available on search engines, we must not underestimate the importance of providing researchers with online access to the most current copyrighted content available.”
Cambridge University Press is one of more than 250 academic and commercial publishers who have licensed content to the Questia library. Other publishers include: Oxford University Press; Greenwood Publishing Group; Perseus Books Group; Stanford University Press; Columbia University Press; Allen & Unwin; Brookings Institution Press; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; Lynne Rienner Publishers; MIT Press; M.E. Sharpe Publishers; Palgrave Macmillan; Peter Lang Publishing; Princeton University Press and Prometheus Books among many others.
Questia’s innovative business model of a low monthly subscription fee provides individuals the ability to pay for access to a massive collection of first-rate, copyrighted content while ensuring that publishers are compensated appropriately for its use. In addition, publishers’ intellectual property is protected from digital copyright violation because Questia’s content is not available for download or off-line viewing and the books are displayed one page at a time, maintaining the original pagination.
“ As our industry enters the next generation of publishing, new electronic methods of reaching readers are emerging," said Michael Holdsworth, Cambridge University Press Managing Director Europe, Middle East and Africa. “Questia was one of the first major online content resources, with a unique business model that allows researchers and students to instantly access excellent academic resources. We are very pleased that Cambridge content will be available through Questia.”
Questia has pioneered a business model that hundreds of thousands of individual subscribers, as well as many of the world’s leading publishers have validated. Through Questia, teachers, students, and scholars in over 190 countries have access anytime, anywhere to a first-rate, 24-hour library focused on the humanities and social sciences.
Questia transforms the research experience by enabling users to instantly search every word of a 20 million page-collection of peer-reviewed, previously published content that is not available anywhere else on the Internet. In addition, Questia delivers 21 st century research tools and a customizable research environment, allowing users quickly and easily to set their own workspace and reading preferences; create project folders and personal bookshelves; and automatically develop properly formatted footnotes and bibliographies in seven different citation styles. Questia also solves traditional research problems, such as missing or checked-out books, books unavailable due to reserve lists, and limited research facility hours, by permitting an unlimited number of simultaneous users and providing individual researchers with complete freedom and mobility to use the online library from any Internet-enabled computer, night and day.
For $19.95 a month, $44.95 a quarter, or $119.95 a year, individuals can have unlimited access to Questia’s growing collection of more than 50,000 academically vetted, full-text books and 400,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. Secondary school students and educators gain access to Questia’s 21 st century academic library based on the number of individual subscriptions purchased by each school or district.
Cambridge University Press is the printing and publishing house of the University of Cambridge. It is an integral part of the University and is devoted constitutionally to printing and publishing for ‘the acquisition, advancement, conservation, and dissemination of knowledge in all subjects.’ For centuries, the Press has extended the research and teaching activities of the University by making available through its printing and publishing a remarkable range of academic and educational books, journals and Bibles.
Today the Press is one of the largest academic and educational publishers in the world, publishing nearly 2,500 books and over 150 journals a year, which are sold in some 200 countries.
Visit www.cambridge.org for more information.
Founded in 1998, Questia Media, Inc., launched its revolutionary online library in January 2001, with powerful search and writing tools created specifically to help students do better research and write better papers. Questia provides unlimited access to the full content of an extensive collection of books and journal articles, as well as a wide range of tools, including highlighter, markup, automatic footnotes and bibliography builder. For millions of students and researchers, the Questia SM service enables them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from virtually every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge.
Visit www.questia.com for more information.