Company History

Coherent Digital was founded in 2018 by Stephen Rhind-Tutt and Toby Green.  Stephen Rhind-Tutt had previously co-founded Alexander Street Press.  Toby Green was previously publisher and COO at the OECD and created the iLibrary database.  Soon after they were joined by executives who had previously worked at Alexander Street including Peter Ciuffetti (creator of KnowledgeCite), André Avorio (creator of the Open Music Library), Eileen Lawrence (co-founder of Alexander Street), Elizabeth Robey (counseling publisher), and Jenna Makowski (anthropology publisher).  Carolina Tobon was an early employee, having previously worked at the OECD. In 2020 Genevieve Croteau joined the company as COO, taking over a wide range of responsibilities including sales, marketing, finance, and human resources. Today the team numbers more than 25 staff.

The principles for the company came from an article by Christian Dupont, a librarian at Boston College and founder of the Aeon special collections software.  He posited a series of principles behind what he describes as ‘a call to massively externalize user data and collections data in order to build a library and archives that is truly of the web, by the web, and for the web’  These principles formed the basis for a system of rapid, low-cost cataloging and a fault tolerant retrieval engine, now marketed as the Commons platform.

In January 2023 Coherent was named to Outsell’s ‘Top 50 Emerging Companies’

Products and services

In November 2020 Coherent launched Mindscape Commons in Beta.  The database indexed and delivered over 300 virtual reality experiences and was the first VR database collection specifically designed for libraries.  Developed in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University, Mercer University and others, it was formally launched in March 2021.  It went on to win a number of awards including the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2021 and Best Reference Database from Library Journal.

Policy Commons followed in November 2020.  This indexes and preserves reports from a wide range of think tanks, IGOs, NGOs and government agencies and claims to be the largest curated source of online public policy documents.  The database uses techniques suggested by Christian Dupont’s article to increase the speed and lower the cost of indexing and preserve materials from inactive think tanks that are in danger of disappearing.

In 2022 Coherent announced its intent build Africa Commons with a purpose to enable the discovery, access and preservation of born African content.  This was launched in November 2022.  The 14 universities of the BTAA (Big Ten Academic Alliance were founding members.

Acquisitions

In July 2021 Coherent entered an agreement with Trojman Corp to acquire the Canadian Electronic Library from Gibson Publications. This collection of 85,000 books and documents from approximately 80 publishers, 65 think tanks, and over 300 public policy organizations is used by more than 200 Canadian academic institutions.  Books were licensed from major Canadian university presses (French and English), a variety of literary presses, and other commercial presses that cover Canadian topics.  The database was relaunched in May 2022 as part of Canada Commons.

In November 2021 Coherent acquired the digital primary source collections from Taylor & Francis.  This included the South Asia Research Archive, the world’s largest database of South Asian materials for libraries, and four history collections produced in collaboration with the National Archives in the UK.  The South Asia Research Archive was launched in July 2022 on South Asia Commons.  The history databases were launched in October 2022 as part of History Commons.

In June 2022 Coherent acquired the Urban Documents and Index to Urban Documents databases from ILM Corporation.  In September 2022 these were launched as a new database within Policy Commons called North American Cities. 

In June 2023 Coherent acquired Accessible Archives. This brought 24 new collections to Coherent’s portfolio and expanded its North American history coverage dramatically. During 2024 these collections will be migrated to Coherent’s History Commons platform.

In February 2024 Coherent acquired McLaren Micropublishing, a company founded in 1973 by Duncan McLaren, a librarian at the University of Toronto. For the next five decades it specialized in creating microfilm collections on a wide range of topics including art, architecture, Canadian history, LGBTQ history and culture, and women's history. Many of the materials in these collections are extremely rare, and more than sixty percent of them have never been digitized. The McLaren collections will be published on Coherent’s Canada Commons platform further strengthening its Canadian offerings .

Partnerships

In February 2022 Coherent signed an arrangement with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to make its databases available in the United Kingdom.   In June 2022 it signed a similar agreement with the Center for Research Libraries for the United States and Canada.

In November 2022 at the Coalition for Networked Information Coherent and the Council for Library and Information Resources (CLIR)  announced an arrangement to collaborate in  creation of African digital materials and other digital initiatives.

Coherent has license agreements with numerous publishers, film companies, newspapers and other content owners, including the Guardian, Wiley, the U.K. National Archives, the South Asia Research Archive, Moi University and many others.  It also distributes databases from Sabinet, a leading South African electronic publisher.