The H.W. Wilson Company was founded in 1898 by Halsey William Wilson.

Here's a brief history of the early years of the company written by Diane Panasci, and reprinted in part from The Lighthouse, Winter 1982.

An Old-Fashioned American Success Story

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. Business began on a modest scale, conducted from their dormitory room. Soon after, they moved to a room in the university's "Old Main" hall.

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

As a bookseller looking to stock available titles, Wilson 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. It was a revolutionary idea.

The office for this new venture was established in Wilson's five-room apartment. Wilson handled the business affairs and his wife—the former Justina Leavitt--did the editorial work. In its first year, 1898, Cumulative Book Index sold for $1, and attracted 300 subscribers.

As CBI expanded, the fledgling Wilson Company hired its first editor, Marion E. Potter. Her eventual fifty-five years of service, hard work, and amazing dedication became a company legend.

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, the creation of the service basis method of charge and the first of a long line of periodical indexes, Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature.

H.W. Wilson's first building, erected in 1905 across from the campus of the University of Minnesota.

By 1903 the foundation for the company's eventual worldwide reputation was solid. One reason for this was Wilson's policy to seek the advice of librarians before publishing anything new. Through the years, each new service has been launched with the advice of the profession it was meant to serve.

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 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.

Fast forward to 2006

H.W. Wilson’s Bronx, New York headquarters now includes four adjoined buildings housing some 275 employees. Offices in Dublin, Ireland house some 100 professional abstracters. Wilson publishes 16 full-text periodicals databases, 7 biography databases, 18 index and 8 abstracts databases, 5 collection development catalogs, Art Museum Image Gallery, Famous First Facts, Electronic Edition, plus many reference monographs. Early WilsonLine and WilsonTape database formats have given way to WilsonWeb, a powerful web-based information retrieval system.

Wilson House, H.W. Wilson's office in Dublin, Ireland

Biography Reference Bank delivers profiles of some 500,000 individuals. Current Biography Illustrated allows fast searching and retrieval of every article from the Current Biography print monthly, back to 1940. Wilson OmniFile features, in a single database, full text from 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. And such databases as Science Full Text Select, Wilson Business Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Art Full Text, Readers’ Guide 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, Education Index Retrospective, Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective, Art Index Retrospective, Readers’ Guide Retrospective, and Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective offer users access to more than a century of valuable historical coverage. Upcoming databases in the Wilson Retrospective Collection include Applied Science & Technology Index Retrospective: 1913-1983 and Biography Index: 1946 to Present.

Besides helping users 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.

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 simply clicks the WilsonLink icon for an automatic search of all the library’s other OpenURL compliant databases, no matter the vendor.

Including a connection to the library’s OPAC (where users can consult holdings information), the complete resources offered by WilsonWeb represent one-stop searching for a wide range of researchers.

Find out more about Wilson databases and print references. Explore our website, get in touch with your local Sales Representative, or contact H.W. Wilson Customer Service.

Halsey William Wilson died in 1954 at the age of eighty-five. 
His mission is as alive as ever.