ProQuest

ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene Power.

ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for libraries, providing access to dissertations, theses, ebooks, newspapers, periodicals, historical collections, governmental archives, cultural archives, and other aggregated databases. This content was estimated to be around 125 billion digital pages.

The company began operations as a producer of microfilm products, subsequently shifting to electronic publishing, and later grew through acquisitions. On December 1, 2021, Clarivate bought ProQuest from Cambridge Information Group for $5.3 billion in what was described as a "huge deal in the library and information publishing world". Clarivate said that the operational concept behind the acquisition was integrating ProQuest's products and applications with Web of Science.

ProQuest was founded as a microfilm publisher. It began publishing doctoral dissertations in 1939, has published more than 3 million searchable dissertations and theses,^{[non-primary source needed]} and is designated as an offsite digital archive for the United States Library of Congress. The company's scholarly content includes dissertations and theses, primary source material, ebooks, scholarly journals, historical and current newspapers and periodicals, data sources, and other content of interest to researchers.^{[non-primary source needed]} ProQuest Video Preservation and Discovery Service allows libraries to preserve and provide access to their proprietary audio and video collections.

In May 2014, ProQuest LLC also operated businesses under the following names:

Eugene Power, a 1927 BA and 1930 MBA graduate of the University of Michigan, founded the company as University Microfilms in 1938, preserving works from the British Museum on microfilm. By June 1938, Power worked in two rented rooms from a downtown Ann Arbor funeral parlor, specializing in microphotography to preserve library collections. In his autobiography Edition of One, Power details the development of the company, including how University Microfilms assisted the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) intelligence agency during World War II. This work mainly involved filming maps and European newspapers so they could be shipped back and forth overseas more cheaply and discreetly.

Power also noticed a niche market in dissertations publishing. Students were often forced to publish their own works in order to finish their doctoral degree. Dissertations could be published more cheaply as microfilm than as books. ProQuest still publishes so many dissertations that its Dissertations and Theses collection (formerly called Digital Dissertations) has been declared the official U.S. off-site repository of the Library of Congress.

The idea of universal adoption of microfilm publication of doctoral dissertations was furthered considerably by two articles researched and written by a then recent recipient of the doctorate in history at Stanford University. Vaughn Davis Bornet seized on the idea and published "Doctoral Dissertations and the Stream of Scholarship" and "Microfilm Publication of Doctoral Dissertations".