I was saddened to hear yesterday on the Against the Grain blog that EBSCO would be acquiring H.W. Wilson. While I have no doubt that Wilson was ailing financially for a while and wasn’t exactly winning any love for its interface, I do have fond feelings for the company for two reasons. First, one of the few things that I recall about my elementary school library from the early 1970s was being introduced to the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. Second, while in library school at the Pratt Institute in the last 1990s, I went on a tour of the Wilson offices up in the Bronx. A a burgeoning library geek, I was thrilled to see cubicle farms where staff were actively indexing journals and magazines as we walked by. Even better, though, was the on-site printing plant that Wilson still maintained and was in operation when we visited.
Fewer database vendors means to me less competition and less innovation, bad news for those of us in the library world. Here’s the text of the email that went just went out moments ago to Wilson customers about the acquisition by EBSCO:|
A New Future for H.W. Wilson Dear Customers: We have exciting news to share. As you know, it has always been our goal to provide the best products and services to our customers, and we are dedicated to supporting the library community as a whole. We will continue to uphold these objectives, and will do so together with EBSCO as we move forward. Effective May 31, 2011, Wilson has merged with EBSCO Publishing. We have maintained a strong partnership with EBSCO through the years, and this joining marks an exciting new beginning that will be immensely positive for Wilson customers. With more than 150 years of combined experience serving libraries and research needs, the strengths of both companies will come together to provide greater products and services – enabling us to take the Wilson databases to unprecedented heights, and together enhance the EBSCO databases as well. As Wilson databases are added to the EBSCOhost platform, customers will be encouraged to transition to EBSCOhost, and you will begin to see the results of the combined effort of Wilson and EBSCO. This partnership will enable huge strides for our companies in serving our customers, and helping you to support your end users. We thank you for your business and loyalty through the years. We look forward to serving your needs for years to come. For questions that we anticipate will be frequently asked, please visit: http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=5482 Sincerely,
|
no surprise here, the wilson company was fallen for years with its weak leadership and selfish pocket hungry executives….
The CEO of the company–AKA the “esteemed” Mr. Harry Regan–retired without a word. The leftover management, unsurprisingly incompetent and stumbling over their own pathetic dribble, wallows in the after-sludge like blind pigs.Good Riddance Wilson.