HighBeam Research

HighBeam Research was a paid full-text online archive and search engine for newspapers, academic journals, magazines, and other publications. The company was founded in August 2002 by Patrick Spain, co-founder of Hoover's, under the name Alacritude, LLC. Spain established the company after acquiring eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com from Tucows, aiming to fill the gap between free search engines and high-end professional services like LexisNexis. The venture was initially backed by investors including Prism Opportunity Fund and 1 to 1 Ventures.

Originally named Alacritude, the company was rebranded as HighBeam Research in 2004. Its business model was based on individual subscriptions, providing access to an expanding library of content from thousands of publishers. The platform served students, individuals, and business professionals by aggregating credible, editorially selected information. Over the years, it grew its archive base significantly, adding content from sources like Oxford University Press, The Washington Post, and Knight Ridder. In 2008, Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage Learning, acquired HighBeam Research, including its companion reference site, Encyclopedia.com. HighBeam continued to operate from its Chicago headquarters. The service was officially shut down in late 2018, and its content was integrated into Questia, another Gale-owned service, which has also since ceased operations.

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