Questia Media

About Questia Media

Questia Media was a company that provided an online commercial digital repository of books and articles with an academic focus, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. It was founded in 1998 by Troy Williams, who conceived the idea for a subscription-based online library while he was an editor at the Harvard Law Review, noticing the disparity in research capabilities between legal cases and books.

The company's primary service, Questia, was launched in early 2001. It operated on a subscription-based business model, offering monthly or annual access to its entire collection, which grew to include over 94,000 books and 14 million articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers. This model was designed to provide students with 24/7 unlimited access to a vast library of full-text sources, aiming to be an indispensable tool for research and paper writing. The service also included research tools for automatically creating citations and bibliographies, highlighting text, and taking notes. The platform's content was selected by academic librarians to ensure credibility.

In January 2010, Questia Media was acquired by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. Following the acquisition, Questia continued to develop its services, launching an iPhone app in 2011, followed by an iPad app, and introducing research tutorials with videos and quizzes in 2013. Despite these developments, Questia ceased all operations on December 21, 2020.