An icon in the library community for 110 years, H.W. Wilson is dedicated to providing the highest-quality web and print resources in the world. H.W. Wilson products are familiar to generations of library users as standard tools in college, public, school, and professional libraries worldwide.

Delivered on the powerful WilsonWeb system, 64 H.W. Wilson reference databases meet today’s research needs. Our periodicals databases bring users full text, page images, abstracts, and indexing of thousands of leading magazines and journals. The acclaimed Wilson Core Collections support collection development in children’s, school and public libraries. Biography databases provide information on more than 500,000 people throughout history. Wilson's Art Museum Image Gallery offers a wealth of art images from an impressive roster of international art museums. Wilson print references consistently earn reviewers’ praise.

Over 150 Wilson editorial staff members with MLS or MLIS degrees—multi-lingual trained librarians and subject specialists—build the Wilson references each day. Nearly 300 employees, at headquarters in New York and Dublin, Ireland, and sales representatives around the country, ensure the standards of quality and support that have built and sustained the H.W. Wilson reputation for excellence. H.W. Wilson’s involvement in the library community, from the sponsorship of industry awards, to support for industry causes and library education, to direct exchange of ideas with librarians and library organizations, keep the Company in touch with the needs of libraries and librarians.

New Products, Innovative Services

Today, H.W. Wilson publishes 39 full-text databases, 25 index databases (including 14 retrospective databases) 8 abstract and index databases, 7 collection development databases, Art Museum Image Gallery (a collection of over 155,000 art images), plus many reference monographs.

WilsonWeb – Versatile and Easy-to-Use

Our databases are delivered on WilsonWeb, a powerful internet-based information retrieval system, offering a user-friendly interface, multiple search modes, interactive help messages, and full text translation into 8 languages. WilsonWeb’s ease-of-use makes for successful searching even for beginners, while its versatility (including advanced features) allows in-depth, highly-targeted searches for more experienced researchers. The system operates from a fast and reliable bank of servers, continually being improved and expanded with technological advances.

WilsonWeb provides an Administrators Module that allows libraries to customize many features, as well as a mature reporting function that libraries can use to generate usage statistics on demand.

WilsonWeb also facilitates the integration of online content and services from other vendors and sources, with WilsonLink OpenURL database-linking technology. If the full text of an article isn’t available on WilsonWeb, the user can simply click the WilsonLink icon for an automatic search of all the library’s other OpenURL compliant databases, no matter the vendor. WilsonWeb also connects with the library’s OPAC, where users can consult holdings information.

Besides helping researchers find the information they need, WilsonWeb helps them format the bibliographies essential to their scholarly papers. With just a few clicks, users can create bibliographic entries of their WilsonWeb search results, or export records to bibliographic management software, such as Endnotes and Refworks.

A World of Invaluable Information

The complete resources offered by WilsonWeb represent an incredible trove of information for a wide range of researchers.

Biography Reference Bank delivers profiles of some 500,000 individuals. Current Biography Illustrated allows fast searching and retrieval of every article from the renowned Current Biography print monthly, back to 1940. Wilson OmniFile Full Text features, in a single database, full text from over 2,200 periodicals in business, the humanities, science and technology, education, social sciences, law, library and information science, and art, plus popular Readers’ Guide publications. Book Review Digest Plus helps users to some 1,300,000 reviews—including more than 112,000 in full text. Such databases as Readers’ Guide Full Text, Art Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Science Full Text Select, Wilson Business Full Text, and others bring researchers a world of complete articles on specialized subjects.

Wilson is also building on its legacy of outstanding indexing with The Wilson Retrospective Collection. Such resources as Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1905-1982, Education Index Retrospective: 1929-1983, Biography Index: Past and Present, Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984, Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984, Readers’ Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982, Library Literature & Information Science Retrospective: 1905-1983, Applied Science & Technology Index Retrospective: 1913-1983, and Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981 offer users access to over 100 years of valuable historical coverage.

A new full-text database, Current Issues: Reference Shelf Plus offers carefully selected full-text articles from key publications on social, scientific, health, political, and global issues, chosen to make up a well-rounded overview, and presented in an attractive, graphical interface.

Free 30-day trials are available for all H.W. Wilson databases.

A Living Legacy of Superior Indexing

The founder of The H.W. Wilson Company, Halsey William Wilson, died in 1954 at the age of 85, but his legacy lives on in the H.W. Wilson editorial policies that inform the development of every new H.W. Wilson product and service.

Not the least among them is Wilson's principle to seek the advice of librarians when developing new products. As a testament to the wisdom of this strategy, many H.W. Wilson products have become standards in library reference collections worldwide.

Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature (established 1901), Book Review Digest (1905) and The Reference Shelf (1907) have lasted over 100 years and continue to draw new subscribers. Index to Legal Periodicals & Books (1908), Children’s Catalog (1909), Education Index (1929), Bibliographic Index (1938), Library Literature (1936), Current Biography (1940), and Biography Index (1946) have served libraries for more than a half-century. Business Periodicals Index (1958), Applied Science & Technology Index (1958), Biological & Agricultural Index (1964), Humanities Index (1974), Social Sciences Index (1974) and General Science Index (1978) have served libraries for over a quarter century.

Wilson indexing standards, established early on, are now widely regarded as industry standards by librarians. Wilson uses Library of Congress Subject Headings, the recognized worldwide model for the development new subject headings systems, as the foundation for the Wilson indexes’ Subject Authority. Wilson headings ensure that all articles are indexed to the most specific points, reflecting current-day events and topics. As evidence of the precision and currency of Wilson headings, the Library of Congress itself often adopts the headings.

Records are revised regularly to reflect the addition of new subject headings, and new subject headings are mapped to the beginning of the file, ensuring that all records on each topic are retrieved. Corporate and personal names are controlled throughout the databases to ensure that searches locate all articles concerning that person or entity.

Traditions and standards established long before the digital revolution guide the H.W. Wilson Company in continuing to serve modern researchers with accuracy, reliability, and versatility unmatched by any other provider.

A Great American Success Story

The foundation for the success of the H.W. Wilson Company was laid in 1889, with a humble bookselling business and a visionary idea.

In 1885, Halsey William Wilson was an enterprising young man working his way through the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In 1889 he and roommate Henry S. Morris invested $400 to create Morris & Wilson, a small bookselling business serving students and educators at the University.

When Morris graduated, he sold his share of the business to Wilson. But Wilson's preoccupation with his new venture permanently postponed his graduation. For Wilson, this was only the beginning.

As a bookseller looking to stock available titles, he faced tedious searches through publishers' catalogs several times a year. But he had a better idea.

He decided to publish a catalog of new books that would remain current throughout the year by combining new entries with old type, merged in a single alphabet, in monthly issues. To save the cost of resetting type, Wilson would store and file the old type and combine it with the new for the cumulated numbers.

Out of this revolutionary idea, Cumulative Book Index, the H.W. Wilson Company’s first original reference, was born. In its first year, 1898, Cumulative Book Index sold for $1, and attracted a respectable 300 subscribers.

In 1901, Wilson decided to do for magazine articles what he had done for books. After careful analysis of existing services and the advice of librarians, he designed an index that grouped articles by subject. He decided to charge subscribers for this service based on the use each would get from the index. Thus came the service basis method of charge and Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, the familiar “green books” today in libraries worldwide.

H.W. Wilson's first building rose in 1905 across from the campus of the University of Minnesota. By then, H.W. Wilson policies that would earn the company’s rise to worldwide prominence were solidly in place.

By 1911, it had become apparent to Wilson that Minneapolis was not the ideal base for his company. Since most subscribers were located in the eastern U.S., the timeliness of his publications was being sacrificed by mail delays.

He reluctantly sold the bookstore that had spurred his move into bibliographic publishing and whose modest profits had subsidized the company's early years of operation. He convinced some of his key employees to come with him to White Plains, New York, twenty-five miles north of New York City.

As demand for more and more specialized indexes increased, the Wilson Company grew. By 1917 it had again outgrown its quarters. Wilson then purchased a five story building in the Bronx on the banks of the Harlem River, which remains an integral part of today's considerably expanded quarters. When continuing growth required it in 1929, Wilson constructed an eight-story building adjoining the original structure.

At the top of that building, he placed a 30-foot lighthouse resting on a book to symbolize the mission of the company: "To give guidance to those seeking their way through the maze of books and periodicals, without which they would be lost." The lighthouse is a familiar landmark today, and as the company logo, still symbolizes its mission.

This history includes an account of the early years of the company written by Diane Panasci (reprinted in part from The Lighthouse, Winter 1982).