You may have read about the precarious financial situation of Cengage Learning, a major publisher of educational and research resources.  Both the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg recently reported that Cengage is widely expected to file for bankruptcy and undergo a financial restructuring to turn its fortunes around.  Gale, a division of Cengage, is a major publisher and aggregator of news, archives, serials, and other materials in digital format, in which academic libraries invest millions annually.  Therefore we thought it would be useful at this stage to hear from Gale about whether and how a restructuring at the parent company might affect Gale operations.

Frank Menchaca, Senior Vice President for Global Product Management at Cengage, has agreed to speak about Gale and its future in two conference calls for representatives of CRL libraries, on June 3 and June 7.  Because of the sensitive nature of the subject, and to permit informal give and take during the calls, we must cap attendance for each call at 30 attendees, and limit participation to one representative per library. This will require us to assign seats on a first-come-first-served basis.  Therefore it is important that your representative register for the event as soon as possible.We wish we could to accommodate all CRL libraries at this event, but will give you our take on the Cengage-Gale situation after the fact.

The conference calls are events of the CRL Global Resources Forum, a program of activities and resources that support informed, strategic library investment in digital collections and services.