Questia Online Library facts for kids
Questia was an online library that gave people access to many books and articles over the internet. It was created to help students and teachers with their schoolwork and research. Most of the materials in Questia were about subjects like history, literature, and social studies.
Questia had a huge collection of books and articles, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Most of these materials were protected by copyright, which means you usually need permission to use them. However, Questia subscribers could read all the text from these books and articles. This was different from services like Google Book Search, which often only let you see small parts of copyrighted books.
How Questia Worked
Questia offered some information for free, even without a paid subscription. You could find many books that were in the public domain, meaning their copyright had expired and they were free for everyone to use. You could also see information about publications, like their tables of contents.
Free Features for Users
Even if you weren't a full subscriber, Questia let you do a few helpful things for free. You could often see the first page of every chapter in a book. It also allowed you to do special searches, called Boolean searches, to find exactly what you needed within its huge collection. Questia also provided short lists of books and articles on many different topics, which could be very useful for starting research.
Questia's History
Questia was started in 1998 in Illinois, USA. It was one of the first big online digital libraries that focused on academic content. For many years, it helped students and researchers find the information they needed easily from their computers.
When Questia Closed
After many years of providing its services, Questia stopped operating in 2020. This meant that the online library was no longer available for people to use.
