H. W. Wilson Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The H. W. Wilson Company is a publisher of reference books and databases, specializing in indexing and abstracting, and based in the Bronx, New York. As a bookseller, Halsey William Wilson faced tedious searches through publishers' catalogues several times a year. He founded the company in 1898 to publish the Cumulative Book Index, a sort of predecessor to the modern Books in Print. The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature started in 1901 and it did for magazine articles what the Cumulative Book Index did for books; it remains a staple of libraries to this day. Also, with each subsequent edition released since the first in 1933, Joseph Nathan Kane's Famous First Facts (ISBN 0-8242-0930-3), now in its fifth edition, remains H.W. Wilson's largest selling single volume reference work.
The company's logo is one of a lighthouse, which symbolizes 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."
