Dialog Finds a New Home.

THE BIGGEST INDUSTRY NEWS this summer was the announcement that proQuest had acquired Dialog from Thomson Reuters. Dialog was beginning to look like an unwelcome stepchild as new strategies by Thomson Reuters were moving the firm away from traditional databases and library markets. ProQuest, by contrast, has a solid foundation in both areas and has been aggressively building with new acquisitions and products.

Still, the news came as a surprise to most of us, as the change happened remarkably fast--rarely is a major acquisition rumored, announced, and completed all within a month.

Dialog, the grandfather of online database systems that included all subject areas, was once the main online service in all types of libraries. From its pre-Internet beginnings 40 ago at NASA and the then Lockheed Missiles and Space Company to its recent increasingly uncomfortable home at Thomson Reuters, Dialog has retained a singular focus on aggregating multidisciplinary databases for power searchers.