Bowker History & Milestones
For more than 140 years, the publishing industry and the communities it serves have looked to Bowker® for meaningful and authoritative industry information. As technology has advanced, so have the ways in which Bowker can gather, supply, and enhance that information with an ever increasing focus on the needs of the markets we serve. We have provided a simple time-line below, detailing the many milestones that make up Bowker's rich history. Talk to us about where we've been and where we hope to go. Your perspective and feedback could be pivotal to our next great milestone.
- 1872: R. R. Bowker launches Publishers Weekly®
- 1873: The Publishers Trade List Annual published
- 1974:R.R. Bowker teams with Melville Dewey to publish volume 1 of Library Journal
- 1880: The American Catalog published
- 1932:The R.R. Bowker Company publishes Periodicals Directory: A Classified Guide to a Selected List of Current Periodicals Foreign and Domestic by Carolyn Ulrich. Its 323 pages capture information for about 6,000 titles. (Today Ulrichsweb™ captures details for more than 300,000 titles.)
- 1948: Books In Print® published
- 1967: Xerox Corporation acquires Bowker
- 1968: Bowker becomes the U.S. ISBN Agency
- 1985: Reed International acquires Bowker
- 1986: Books In Print® ON DISC introduced
- 1997: Thorpe-Bowker%reg; becomes the A.U. ISBN Agency
- 1999: ulrichsweb.com® launched
- 2000: BooksInPrint.com® launched
- 2000: GlobalBooksInPrint.com® launched
- 2001: Cambridge Information Group acquires Bowker
- 2002: Barnes & Noble designates Books In Print® database of record
- 2002: Bowker acquires Pubnet®
- 2003: Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System™ launched
- 2003: Bowker acquires PubEasy®
- 2003: Bowker acquires Simba Information®
- 2004: PatronBooksInPrint.com™ is launched
- 2004: Bowker acquires Monument Information Resource™ (MIR)
- 2004: Bowker acquires Syndetic Solutions™
- 2005: Bowker debuts Ulrich's Resource Linker™
- 2005: Bowker introduces Bowker's Book Analysis System™ with H.W. Wilson
- 2006: Fiction Connection™ readers advisory tool is launched
- 2006: Resources for College Libraries™ database of core titles is launched
- 2007: Bowker launches PubTrack™ suite of business intelligence tools
- 2007: Syndetic Solutions™ launches Syndetics ICE™ search tool
- 2007: Non-Fiction Connection™ readers advisory tool is launched
- 2007: Bowker acquires Medialab Solutions, developer of AquaBrowser® Library
- 2008: Bowker launches MyIdentifiers.com comprehensive identifier services site
- 2011: Bowker launch Selfpublishedauthor.com
- 2011: Bowker launched the MYIdentifers.com for Australia
- 2015: Bowker launches a spanish version of Myidentifers.com
