As the headline implies, Gale Cengage has acquired Questia Media, Inc. and its quesia.com and questiaschool.com products. The announcement was made late last week, and Information Today, Inc.'s news editor, Paula Hane, spoke with execs and Gale and Questia, plus with analysts and others, to quickly put together a NewsLink Spotlight story on the subject. From her story:

In December 2008, Gale (www.gale.com/), a part of Cengage Learning (www.cengage.com), acquired the HighBeam Library and Encyclopedia.com, thus expanding its userbase beyond libraries to general web users (http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Gale-Acquires-HighBeam-Research-to-Connect-With-End-Users-51979.asp). At the time, John Barnes, executive vice president, strategic marketing and business development of Gale, said, "A central element of Gale's market strategy is to connect more closely with end-users of information, whether they are in a library, classroom, or on the web." Gale is continuing down this path in its just announced acquisition of Questia Media, Inc., a provider of information and educational resources to high school and college students through its Questia.com and QuestiaSchool.com products. Questia provides an affordable premium subscription service that gives users access to more than 76,000 books from 300-plus publishers in the humanities and social sciences, plus about 3 million articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers. The companies see considerable potential for the combination of their resources and tools.

Click HERE to link to Paula's full story, "Gale Reaches for More End Users With Questia Acquisition," on Information Today, Inc.'s NewBreaks site.