Gearing Up
Posted On Jan 10 2007Seattle will be my 6th ALA conference as an American Libraries columnist, and my 2nd since the summer 2006 launch of Hectic Pace. It’s part of my duty to cover the exhibit floor for the magazine, and here I will admit it for the first time–it is my favorite part of the job. There’s something one cannot get from press releases, phone calls, e-mails, and webinars. This is not to say that one can get a whole lot more from a scripted demo by someone who has worked for a company for 2 weeks, but there’s something about walking the …
SirsiDynix Finds a New Investor
Posted On Dec 28 2006In a somewhat surprising announcement, SirsiDynix announced late last week that it had a “new investment partner,” Vista Equity. Details were scant but a formal (and only slightly more detailed) press release (pdf) was issued yesterday. Vista is a private equity firm with over $1 billion in capital, primarily in the software and technology sectors. SirsiDynix, of course, is one of the biggest players in the market, with nearly 4,000 clients. Sirsi and Dynix merged only 18 months ago to create the largest company in the library automation sector. “We are long-term investors in technology companies that are committed to …
Another Big Buyout
Posted On Dec 16 2006It’s the holiday season. What do you buy for the content provider who already has everything (or at least a strong stake in natural sciences, social sciences, technology, arts, and humanities)? Well, if you had $222 million you could have bought ProQuest Information and Learning (PQIL) for the Cambridge Information Group. But you probably don’t have that kind of cash lying around. No worries, CIG bought PQIL for itself. In a press release issued yesterday morning, CIG announced its intention to combine its subsidiary, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA), with the ProQuest division, which includes ProQuest, Chadwyck-Healey, UMI, Micromedia ProQuest, Serials …