HighBeam Research

• 1. Introduction

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  HighBeam Research was a paid online archive that promised to fill a gap its founder, Patrick Spain, saw as glaring: the space between free search engines like Google and expensive professional tools like LexisNexis and Factiva. Spain described it plainly, saying there was a glaring gap between free search and high-end offerings. What grew from that observation was a Chicago-based archive that would eventually span thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade publications, and encyclopedias. How did a company born from a quirky name and a buying spree in 2002 grow into one of the largest text archives on the web, and why did it quietly disappear in late 2018 after sixteen years?

• 2. From Alacritude to HighBeam

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  Patrick Spain had just sold Hoover's, the company he co-founded, when he made his next move in August 2002. He bought two properties from Tucows: eLibrary and Encyclopedia.com. eLibrary brought with it a library of 1,200 newspaper, magazine, and radio and TV transcript archives, most of which were not freely available to the public. Spain merged these assets under a newly formed company called Alacritude, LLC, a name blending the words alacrity and attitude. Backing him from the start were two investors: Prism Opportunity Fund of Chicago and 1 to 1 Ventures, based in Stamford, Connecticut. Before the year was out, Alacritude acquired Researchville.com as well, adding to an archive that was already growing quickly. The name Alacritude did not last long. In 2004, the company rebranded as HighBeam Research, the identity it would carry for the rest of its existence.

• 3. Building the Archive

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  By 2003, the archive had grown to cover articles from 2,600 publishers, more than double the holdings Spain had acquired when he bought eLibrary. Two years later, in 2005, that count climbed again to 3,500 publishers. The year 2006 brought particularly notable additions: the archives of Oxford University Press, Knight Ridder, and The Washington Post all joined the platform. The archive also featured a significant number of articles from Trinity Mirror Group, the UK-based media company. Each new addition pushed HighBeam further toward its goal of bridging the gap between what a casual Google search could find and what professional researchers had historically needed expensive subscriptions to access.

• 4. Acquisition and Closure

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  In 2008, Gale acquired HighBeam Research. Gale was itself a subsidiary of Cengage, the large educational publisher. Under Cengage, HighBeam continued operating as a paid search and archive service, owned by the same corporate parent that ran other large reference properties. The archive ran for a total of sixteen years before the end came in late 2018. When HighBeam shut down, its content was not simply deleted. All of the material was transferred to Questia, another online library service, ensuring that the collected archive found a new home rather than disappearing entirely.