The
Encyclopædia Britannica (
Latin for "the British Encyclopædia") is a
general
English-language encyclopaedia published by
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc., a
privately held
company. The articles in the
Britannica are aimed at
educated adult readers, and written by a staff of about
100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert
contributors. It is widely regarded as the most scholarly of
encyclopaedias.
The
Britannica is the oldest English-language
encyclopaedia still in print.
It was first published between 1768 and 1771
in Edinburgh
, Scotland
and quickly
grew in popularity and size, with its third edition in 1801
reaching 20 volumes. Its rising stature helped in recruiting
eminent contributors, and the 9th edition (1875–1889) and the
11th
edition (1911) are regarded as landmark encyclopaedias for
scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition,
the
Britannica gradually shortened and simplified its
articles in order to broaden its North American market. In 1933,
the
Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt a
"continuous revision" policy, in which the encyclopaedia is
continually reprinted and every article is updated on a regular
schedule.
The current 15th editionhas a unique three-part structure: a
12-volume
Micropædia of
short articles (generally having fewer than 750 words), a
17-volume
Macropædia of
long articles (having from two to 310 pages) and a single
Propædia volume intended to
give a
hierarchical outline of human
knowledge. The
Micropædia is meant for quick fact-checking
and as a guide to the
Macropædia; readers are advised to
study the
Propædia outline to understand a subject's
context and to find other, more detailed articles. The size of the
Britannica has remained roughly constant over the past
70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million
topics. Although publication has been based in the United States
since 1901, the
Britannica has maintained its traditional
British
spelling.
Over the course of its history, the
Britannica has had
difficulty remaining profitable—a problem faced by many
encyclopaedias. Some articles in certain earlier editions of the
Britannica have been criticised for inaccuracy, bias, or
unqualified contributors. The accuracy in parts of the present
edition has likewise been questioned, although such criticisms have
been challenged by
Britannica's management. Despite these
criticisms, the
Britannica retains its reputation as a
reliable research tool.
History
Ownership of the
Britannica has changed many times, with
past owners including the Scottish publisher
A & C Black,
Horace Everett Hooper,
Sears Roebuck and
William Benton.
The present owner of
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is Jacqui
Safra, a Swiss
billionaire
and actor. Recent advances in
information technology and the rise
of electronic encyclopedias such as
Microsoft Encarta and
Wikipedia have reduced the demand for print
encyclopedias. To remain competitive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
has stressed the good reputation of the
Britannica,
reduced its price and production costs, and developed electronic
versions on
CD-ROM,
DVD,
and the
World Wide Web. Since the
early 1930s, the company has also promoted spin-off reference
works.
Editions

Title page of the first edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica
The
Britannica has been issued in 15 official editions,
with multi-volume supplements to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the
Table below). Strictly speaking,
the 10th edition was only a supplement to the 9th edition, just as
the 12th and 13th editions were supplements to the 11th edition.
The 15th edition underwent a massive re-organisation in 1985, but
the updated, current version is still known as the 15th
edition.Throughout its history, the
Britannica has had two
aims: to be an excellent reference book and to provide educational
material for those who wish to study. In 1974, the 15th edition
adopted a third goal: to systematise all of human knowledge. The
history of the
Britannica can be divided into five main
eras, punctuated by major changes in management or re-organisation
of the dictionary.
First era
In the first era (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the
Britannica was managed and published by its original
founders,
Colin Macfarquhar and
Andrew Bell, by
Archibald Constable, and by others.
The
Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in
Edinburgh
as the Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A
Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, compiled upon a New
Plan. In part, it was conceived in reaction to the
provocative French
Encyclopédie of
Denis Diderot and
Jean Le Rond D'Alembert (published
1751–1772), which in turn had been inspired by
Chambers's
Cyclopaedia (first edition 1728). The
Britannica was primarily a Scottish enterprise; it
represents one of the most famous and enduring legacies of the
Scottish Enlightenment. In
this era, the
Britannica moved from being a three-volume
set (1st edition) compiled by one young editor—
William Smellie—to a
20-volume set written by numerous authorities. Several other
encyclopaedias competed with the
Britannica throughout
this period, among them editions of Rees's
Cyclopaedia and
Coleridge's Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana.
Second era
During the
second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the Britannica
was managed by the Edinburgh
publishing firm, A &
C Black. Although some contributors were again recruited
through personal friendships of the chief editors, most notably
Macvey Napier, others were attracted
by the
Britannica's ever-improving reputation. The
contributors often came from other countries and included some of
the world's most respected authorities in their fields. A general
index of all articles was included for the first time in the 7th
edition, a practice that was maintained until 1974. The first
English-born editor-in-chief was
Thomas Spencer Baynes, who oversaw the
production of the famous 9th edition; dubbed the "Scholar's
Edition", the 9th is often considered to be the most scholarly
Britannica ever produced. However, by the close of the
19th century, the 9th edition was outdated and the
Britannica faced significant financial difficulties.
Third era
In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), the
Britannica was managed by American businessmen, who
introduced aggressive marketing practices, such as
direct marketing and
door-to-door sales, to increase profits. The
American owners also gradually simplified the
Britannica's
articles, making them less scholarly but more intelligible to a
mass market. The 10th edition was a rapidly produced supplement to
the 9th edition, but the 11th edition is still praised for its
excellence; its owner,
Horace
Hooper, lavished enormous effort on its perfection. When Hooper
fell into financial difficulties, the
Britannica was
managed by
Sears Roebuck for roughly
18 years (1920–1923, 1928–1943). In 1932, the vice-president of
Sears,
Elkan Harrison Powell,
assumed the presidency of the
Britannica; in 1936, he
began the policy of continuous revision (still practiced today), in
which every article is checked and possibly revised at least twice
a decade. This was a major departure from earlier practice, in
which the articles were not changed until a new edition was
produced, at roughly 25-year intervals, with some articles being
carried over unchanged from earlier editions. Powell aggressively
developed new educational products that built upon the
Britannica's reputation. In 1943, ownership passed from
Sears Roebuck to
William Benton, who
managed the
Britannica until his death in 1973. Benton
also set up the
Benton Foundation,
which managed the
Britannica until 1996. In 1968, near the
end of this era, the
Britannica celebrated
its
bicentennial.
Fourth era
In the fourth era (15th edition, 1974–1994), the
Britannica introduced its 15th edition, which was
re-organised into three parts: the
Micropædia, the
Macropædia and the
Propædia. Under the influence of
Mortimer J. Adler (member of the Board of Editors of
Encyclopædia Britannica since its inception in 1949, and its chair
from 1974; director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition
of
Britannica from 1965), the
Britannica sought
not only to be a good reference work and educational tool, but also
to systematise all of human knowledge. The absence of a separate
index and the grouping of articles into two parallel encyclopaedias
(the
Micro- and
Macropædia) provoked a "firestorm
of criticism" of the initial 15th edition.
*
*
*
*
*
*
* In response, the 15th edition was completely re-organised and
indexed for a re-release in 1985. This second version of the 15th
edition continues to be published and revised; the latest version
is the 2007 print version. The official title of the 15th edition
is the
New Encyclopædia Britannica, although it has also
been promoted as
Britannica 3.
Fifth era
In the fifth era (1994–present), digital versions of the
Britannica have been developed and released on
optical media and online. In 1996, the
Britannica was bought from the
Benton Foundation by
Jacqui Safra at well below its estimated value,
owing to the company's financial difficulties. The
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. company split in 1999. One part retained the company name
and developed the print version, and the other part,
Britannica.com Inc., developed the
digital versions. Since 2001, these two companies shared a single
CEO, originally
Ilan Yeshua, who has continued
Powell's strategy of growing
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. by introducing new products branded with the
Britannica name.
Dedications
The
Britannica was
dedicated to the reigning
British monarch from 1788 to 1901
and then, upon its sale to an American partnership, to both the
British monarch and the
President of the United
States. Thus, the 11th edition is "dedicated by Permission to
His Majesty
George the
Fifth, King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British
Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, and to
William Howard Taft, President of the
United States of America." The order of the two dedications has
changed with the relative power of the United States and Britain,
and with the relative sales of the
Britannica in these
countries; the 1954 version of the 14th edition is "Dedicated by
Permission to the Heads of the Two English-Speaking Peoples,
Dwight David Eisenhower,
President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth the
Second." Consistent with this tradition, the 2007 version of
the current 15th edition is "dedicated by permission to the current
President of the United States of America,
George W. Bush,
and Her Majesty,
Queen Elizabeth
II."
Critical and popular assessments
Reputation
Since the 3rd edition, the
Britannica has enjoyed a
popular and critical reputation for general excellence. Various
editions from the 3rd to the 9th were pirated for sale in the
United States, beginning with
Dobson's Encyclopædia. On the
release of the 14th edition,
Time magazine dubbed the
Britannica the "Patriarch of the Library". In a related
advertisement, naturalist
William
Beebe was quoted as saying that the
Britannica was
"beyond comparison because there is no competitor." References to
the
Britannica can be found throughout
English literature, most notably in one
of
Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite
Sherlock Holmes stories, "
The Red-Headed League". The tale was
highlighted by the
Lord Mayor of
London, Gilbert Inglefield, at the
bicentennial of
the Britannica.
The
Britannica has a popular reputation for summarising
all of human knowledge. To further their education, many have
devoted themselves to reading the entire
Britannica,
taking anywhere from three to 22 years to do so. When
Fat'h Ali became the
Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a
complete set of the
Britannica's 3rd edition, which he
read completely; after this feat, he extended his royal title to
include "Most Formidable Lord and Master of the
Encyclopædia
Britannica."
Writer George
Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the complete 9th
edition—except for the science articles—and Richard Evelyn Byrd took the
Britannica as reading material for his five-month stay at
the South
Pole
in 1934, while Philip
Beaver read it during a sailing expedition. More
recently,
A.J. Jacobs, an editor at
Esquire magazine, read the entire
2002 version of the 15th edition, describing his experiences in the
well-received 2004 book,
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest
Person in the World. Only two people are known to have
read two independent editions: the author
C. S. Forester and
Amos
Urban Shirk, an American businessman, who read the 11th and
14th editions, devoting roughly three hours per night for four and
a half years to read the 11th. Several editors-in-chief of the
Britannica are likely to have read their editions
completely, such as
William Smellie (1st
edition),
William Robertson
Smith (9th edition), and
Walter Yust
(14th edition).
Awards
The
Britannica continues to win awards. The online
Britannica won the 2005
Codie
award for "Best Online Consumer Information Service"; the Codie
awards are granted yearly by the
Software and
Information Industry Association to recognise the best products
among categories of software. In 2006, the
Britannica was
again a finalist. Similarly, the CD/DVD-ROM version of the
Britannica received the 2004 Distinguished Achievement
Award from the
Association of Educational
Publishers, and Codie awards in 2000, 2001 and 2002. On July
15, 2009, Encyclopædia Britannica was awarded a spot as one of "Top
Ten Superbrands in the UK" by a panel of more than 2,000
independent reviewers, as reported by the BBC.
Coverage of topics
As a general encyclopaedia, the
Britannica seeks to
describe as wide a range of topics as possible. The topics are
chosen in part by reference to the
Propædia "Outline of Knowledge". The bulk
of the
Britannica is devoted to geography (26% of the
Macropædia), biography
(14%), biology and medicine (11%), literature (7%), physics and
astronomy (6%), religion (5%), art (4%), Western philosophy (4%),
and law (3%). A complementary study of the
Micropædia found that geography
accounted for 25% of articles, science 18%, social sciences 17%,
biography 17%, and all other humanities 25%. Writing in 1992, one
reviewer judged that the "range, depth, and catholicity of coverage
[of the
Britannica] are unsurpassed by any other general
encyclopedia."
The
Britannica does not cover similar topics in equivalent
detail; for example, the whole of
Buddhism
and most other religions is covered in a single
Macropædia article, whereas 14 articles
are devoted to
Christianity, comprising
nearly half of all religion articles. However, the
Britannica has been lauded as the
least biased of
general encyclopedias marketed to Western readers and praised for
its biographies of important women of all eras.
Criticisms
The
Britannica has also received criticism, especially as
its editions become outdated. It is expensive to produce a
completely new edition of the
Britannica, and its editors
generally delay this for as long as fiscally sensible (usually
about 25 years). For example, despite the policy of continuous
revision, the 14th edition had become significantly outdated after
35 years (1929–1964). When American physicist
Harvey Einbinder detailed its failings in
his 1964 book,
The Myth of the Britannica, the
encyclopaedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which
required 10 years of work. It is still difficult to keep the
Britannica current; one recent critic writes, "it is not
difficult to find articles that are out-of-date or in need of
revision," noting that the longer
Macropædia articles are
more likely to be outdated than the shorter
Micropædia
articles. Information in the
Micropædia is sometimes
inconsistent with the corresponding
Macropædia article(s),
mainly because of the failure to update one or the other. The
bibliographies of the
Macropædia articles have been
criticised for being more out-of-date than the articles
themselves.
Historically, the
Britannica's authors have included
eminent authorities, such as
Albert
Einstein,
Marie Curie and
Leon Trotsky. However, some of its contributors
have been criticised for their lack of expertise:
Bias
Various authorities, ranging from
Virginia Woolf to academic professors,
criticised the 11th edition
Britannica for having
bourgeois and old-fashioned opinions on art,
literature, and social sciences. For example, it was faulted for
neglecting the work of
Sigmund Freud.
A
contemporary Cornell
professor, Edward
B. Titchener, wrote
in 1912, "the new
Britannica does not reproduce the
psychological atmosphere of its day and generation… Despite the
halo of authority, and despite the scrutiny of the staff, the great
bulk of the secondary articles in general psychology … are not
adapted to the requirements of the intelligent reader."
Editorial choices
The
Britannica is occasionally criticised for its
editorial choices. Given its roughly constant size, the
encyclopaedia has needed to reduce or eliminate some topics to
accommodate others, resulting in some controversial decisions. The
initial 15th edition (1974–1985) was faulted for having drastically
reduced or eliminated its coverage of
children's literature,
military decorations, and the French
poet
Joachim du Bellay; editorial
mistakes were also alleged, such as an inconsistent sorting of
Japanese biographies. Its elimination of the index was condemned,
as was the apparently arbitrary division of articles into the
Micropædia and
Macropædia. Summing up, one critic
called the initial 15th edition a "qualified failure…[that] cares
more for juggling its format than for preserving information." More
recently, reviewers from the
American Library Association
were surprised to find that most educational articles had been
eliminated from the 1992
Macropædia, along with the
article on
psychology.
Britannica-appointed contributors are occasionally
mistaken or unscientific. A notorious instance from the
Britannica's early years is the rejection of
Newtonian gravity by
George Gleig, the chief editor of the 3rd
edition (1788–1797), who wrote that gravity was caused by the
classical element of fire.
However, the
Britannica has also staunchly defended a
scientific approach to emotional topics, as it did with
William Robertson Smith's articles
on religion in the 9th edition, particularly his article stating
that the
Bible was not historically accurate
(1875).
Wendy Doniger, who is on the editorial
board of Britannica, has been criticized for her negative portrayal
of
Hinduism. Britannica's presentation of
Hinduism has also been criticized.
Racism and sexism
Critics have charged past editions of the
Britannica with
racism and sexism. The 11th edition (1910–1911) characterises the
Ku Klux Klan as protecting the white
race and restoring order to the
American South after the
American Civil War, citing the
need to "control the negro", to "prevent any intermingling of the
races" and "the frequent occurrence of the crime of rape by negro
men upon white women." Similarly, the article on
Civilization argues for
eugenics,
stating that it is irrational to "propagate low orders of
intelligence, to feed the ranks of paupers, defectives and
criminals … which to-day constitute so threatening an obstacle
to racial progress." The 11th edition has no biography of
Marie Curie, despite her winning of the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and
the
Nobel Prize in
Chemistry in 1911, although she is mentioned briefly under the
biography of her husband
Pierre Curie.
The
Britannica employed a large female editorial staff
that wrote hundreds of articles for which they were not given
credit.
Inaccuracy
In 1912 mathematician
L. C. Karpinski
criticised the
Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition for its many inaccuracies in
the articles on the
history of
mathematics, none of which had been written by specialists in
the field. In 1917, art critic
Willard
Huntington Wright published a book,
Misinforming a
Nation, that highlighted inaccuracies and English biases of
the
Eleventh Edition, particularly in the humanities
articles. Many of Wright's criticisms were addressed in later
editions of the
Britannica. However, his book was
denounced as a polemic by some contemporary reviewers; for example,
the
New York Times wrote
that a "spiteful and shallow temper…pervades the book," while
The New Republic opined,
"it is unfortunate for Mr. Wright's remorseless purpose that he has
proceeded in an unscientific spirit and given so little objective
justification of his criticism." Another critic, English writer and
former priest
Joseph McCabe, claimed
that after the 11th edition the
Britannica was censored
under pressure from the
Roman
Catholic Church in his book,
Lies And Fallacies Of The
Encyclopedia Britannica (1947).
The
Britannica has always conceded that errors are
inevitable in an encyclopaedia. Speaking of the 3rd edition
(1788–1797), its chief editor
George
Gleig wrote that "perfection seems to be incompatible with the
nature of works constructed on such a plan, and embracing such a
variety of subjects." More recently (March 2006), the
Britannica wrote that "we in no way mean to imply that
Britannica is error-free; we have never made such a
claim."The sentiment is expressed by its original editor,
William Smellie:
Present status
Print version
Since 1985, the
Britannica has had four parts: the
Micropædia, the
Macropædia, the
Propædia, and a two-volume
index. The
Britannica's articles are found in the
Micro- and
Macropædia, which encompass 12 and 17
volumes, respectively, each volume having roughly one thousand
pages. The 2007
Macropædia has 699 in-depth articles,
ranging in length from 2 to 310 pages and having references and
named contributors. In contrast, the 2007
Micropædia has
roughly 65,000 articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which
contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and no named
contributors. The
Micropædia articles are intended for
quick fact-checking and to help in finding more thorough
information in the
Macropædia. The
Macropædia
articles are meant both as authoritative, well-written articles on
their subjects and as storehouses of information not covered
elsewhere. The longest article (310 pages) is on the United States,
and resulted from the merger of the articles on the individual
states.
Information can be found in the
Britannica by following
the cross-references in the
Micropædia and
Macropædia; however, these are sparse, averaging one
cross-reference per page. Hence, readers are recommended to consult
instead the alphabetical index or the
Propædia, which
organises the
Britannica's contents by topic.
The core of the
Propædia is its "Outline of Knowledge,"
which aims to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge.
Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by the
Britannica's
editors to decide which articles should be included in the
Micro- and
Macropædia. The Outline is also
intended to be a study guide, to put subjects in their proper
perspective, and to suggest a series of
Britannica
articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth.
However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used, and
reviewers have recommended that it be dropped from the
encyclopedia. The
Propædia also has color transparencies
of human anatomy and several appendices listing the staff members,
advisors, and contributors to all three parts of the
Britannica.
Taken together, the
Micropædia and
Macropædia
comprise roughly 40 million words and 24,000 images. The two-volume
index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in the
Britannica, together with 474,675 subentries under those
topics. The
Britannica generally prefers
British spelling over
American; for example, it uses
colour (not
color),
centre (not
center), and
encyclopaedia (not
encyclopedia). However, there are exceptions to this rule,
such as
defense rather than
defence. Common
alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as
"Color:
see Colour."
Since 1936, the articles of the
Britannica have been
revised on a regular schedule, with at least 10% of them considered
for revision each year. According to one Britannica website, 46% of
its articles were revised over the past three years; however,
according to another Britannica web-site, only 35% of the articles
were revised.
The alphabetisation of articles in the
Micropædia and
Macropædia follows strict rules.
Diacritical marks and non-English letters are
ignored, while numerical entries such as "
1812, War of" are alphabetised as if the number
had been written out ("Eighteen-twelve, War of"). Articles with
identical names are ordered first by persons, then by places, then
by things. Rulers with identical names are organised first
alphabetically by country and then by chronology; thus,
Charles III of France precedes
Charles I of England, listed in
Britannica as the ruler of Great Britain and Ireland.
(That is, they are alphabetised as if their titles were "Charles,
France, 3" and "Charles, Great Britain and Ireland, 1".) Similarly,
places that share names are organised alphabetically by country,
then by ever-smaller political divisions.
Related printed material
There have been and are several abridged
Britannica
encyclopedias. The single-volume
Britannica Concise
Encyclopædia has 28,000 short articles condensing the larger
32-volume
Britannica.
Compton's by Britannica,
first published in 2007, incorporating the former
Compton's Encyclopedia, is aimed
at 10-17 year olds and consists of 26 volumes and 11,000 pages. A
Children's Britannica was published by the company's
London office in 1960; this was edited by John Armitage and
dedicated to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; contributors
were almost all British, and editorial consultants were "The
Headmaster, Staff and Children of the William Austin Primary
School, Luton, Bedfordshire". Other products include
My First
Britannica, aimed at children ages six to twelve, and the
Britannica Discovery Library, written for children aged
three to six (issued 1974 to 1991). Since 1938,
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. has published annually a
Book of the Year
covering the past year's events, which is available online back to
the 1994 edition (covering the events of 1993). The company also
publishes several specialised reference works, such as
Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the
Bard (Wiley, 2006).
Optical disc, online, and mobile versions
Encyclopædia Britannica Online
The
Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD contains
over 55 million words and just over 100,000 articles. This includes
73,645 regular
Britannica articles, with the remainder
drawn from the
Britannica Student Encyclopædia, the
Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia and the
Britannica
Book of the Year (1993–2004), plus a few "classic" articles
from early editions of the encyclopaedia. The package includes a
range of supplementary content including maps, videos, sound clips,
animations and web links. It also offers study tools and dictionary
and thesaurus entries from
Merriam-Webster.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online is a
Web site with more than 120,000 articles and is
updated regularly. It has daily features, updates and links to news
reports from
The New York
Times and the
BBC. Roughly 60% of
Encyclopedia Britannica's revenue comes from online operations, of
which around 15% comes from subscriptions to the consumer version
of the websites. Subscriptions are available on a yearly, monthly
or weekly basis. Special subscription plans are offered to schools,
colleges and libraries; such institutional subscribers constitute
an important part of Britannica's business. Articles may be
accessed online for free, but only a few opening lines of text are
displayed. Beginning in early 2007, the
Britannica made
articles freely available if they are linked to from an external
site; such external links often improve an article's
rankings in
search engine results.
On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced that
it was working with
mobile phone search
company
AskMeNow to launch a mobile
encyclopedia. Users will be able to send a question via
text message, and AskMeNow will search
Britannica's 28,000-article concise encyclopedia to return
an answer to the query. Daily topical features sent directly to
users' mobile phones are also planned.
On 3 June 2008, an initiative to facilitate collaboration between
online expert and amateur scholarly contributors for Britannica's
on-line content (in the spirit of a
wiki), with
editorial oversight from Britannica staff, was announced. Approved
contributions would be credited, though contributing automatically
grants Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. perpetual, irrevocable license
to those contributions. This contrasts with Wikipedia, in which
text contributions are
licensed under the
Creative Commons
Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the
GNU Free Documentation
License, two
copyleft licenses.
On January 22, 2009, Britannica's president,
Jorge Cauz, announced that the company would be
accepting edits and additions to the online Britannica website from
the public. The published edition of the encyclopedia will not be
affected by the changes. Individuals wishing to edit the Britannica
website will have to register utilising their real name and address
prior to editing or submitting their content. All edits submitted
will be reviewed, checked and have to be approved by the
encyclopedia's professional staff. Contribution from non-academic
users will sit in a separate section to the expert-generated
Britannica content, as will content submitted by
non-
Britannica scholars. Articles written by users, if
vetted and approved, will also only be available in a special
section of the website, separate from the professional articles.
Official
Britannica material would carry a "Britannica
Checked" stamp, to distinguish it from the user-generated
content.
Personnel and management
Contributors
The 2007 print version of the
Britannica boasts 4,411
contributors, many eminent in their fields, such as Nobel Laureate
economist
Milton Friedman,
astronomer
Carl Sagan, and surgeon
Michael DeBakey. Roughly a quarter
of the contributors are deceased, some as long ago as 1947
(
Alfred North Whitehead),
while another quarter are retired or
emeritus. Most (approximately 98%) contribute to
only a single article; however, 64 contributed to three articles,
23 contributed to four articles, 10 contributed to five articles,
and 8 contributed to more than five articles.
An exceptionally
prolific contributor is Dr. Christine
Sutton of the University of Oxford
, who contributed 24 articles on particle physics.
Staff
Dale Hoiberg, a
sinologist, is the
Britannica's Senior
Vice President and editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors as
editors-in-chief were
Hugh Chisholm
(1902–1924),
James Louis Garvin
(1926–1932),
Franklin Henry
Hooper (1932–1938),
Walter Yust
(1938–1960),
Harry Ashmore
(1960–1963),
Warren E. Preece (1964–1968, 1969–1975), Sir
William Haley (1968–1969),
Philip W. Goetz (1979–1991), and
Robert McHenry (1992–1997).
Anita Wolff and
Theodore Pappas serve as the current Deputy
Editor and Executive Editor, respectively. Prior Executive Editors
include
John V. Dodge (1950–1964) and
Philip W. Goetz.
The
Britannica maintains an editorial staff of five Senior
Editors and nine Associate Editors, supervised by
Dale Hoiberg and four others. The editorial
staff help in authoring the articles of the
Micropædia and some sections of the
Macropædia.
Editorial advisors
The
Britannica has an Editorial Board of Advisors, which
includes 12 distinguished scholars:
- author Nicholas Carr,
- religion scholar Wendy
Doniger,
- political economist Benjamin
M. Friedman,
- Council on Foreign
Relations President Emeritus Leslie
H. Gelb,
- computer scientist David
Gelernter,
- Physics Nobel laureate Murray
Gell-Mann,
- Carnegie
Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian,
- philosopher Thomas Nagel,
- cognitive scientist Donald
Norman,
- musicologist Don Michael
Randel,
- Stewart
Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood, President of the
Royal Society of
Edinburgh, and
- cultural anthropologist Michael
Wesch.
The
Propædia and its
Outline of Knowledge were produced by dozens of editorial
advisors under the direction of
Mortimer J. Adler. Roughly half of these advisors have
since died, including some of the Outline's chief architects:
Rene Dubos (d. 1982),
Loren Eiseley (d. 1977),
Harold D. Lasswell (d. 1978),
Mark Van Doren (d. 1972),
Peter Ritchie Calder (d. 1982) and
Mortimer J. Adler (d. 2001). The
Propædia
also lists just under 4,000 advisors who were consulted for the
unsigned
Micropædia
articles.
Corporate structure
In January
1996, the Britannica was purchased from the Benton Foundation by billionaire Swiss
financier
Jacqui Safra, who serves as its current
Chair of the Board. In 1997,
Don
Yannias, a long-time associate and investment advisor of Safra,
became
CEO of
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. A new company,
Britannica.com Inc. was
spun off in 1999 to develop the digital
versions of the
Britannica; Yannias assumed the role of
CEO in the new company, while that of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
remained vacant for two years. Yannias' tenure at
Britannica.com Inc. was marked by
missteps, large lay-offs and financial losses. In 2001, Yannias was
replaced by
Ilan Yeshua, who reunited
the leadership of the two companies. Yannias later returned to
investment management, but remains on the
Britannica's
Board of Directors.
In 2003, former management consultant
Jorge Aguilar-Cauz was appointed
President of
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. Cauz is the senior executive and reports directly to the
Britannica's Board of Directors. Cauz has been pursuing
alliances with other companies and extending the
Britannica brand to new educational and reference
products, continuing the strategy pioneered by former CEO
Elkan Harrison Powell in the
mid-1930s.
Under Safra's ownership, the company has experienced financial
difficulties, and has responded by reducing the price of its
products and implementing drastic cost cuts. According to a 2003
report in the
New York Post,
the
Britannica management has eliminated employee
401 accounts and encouraged the use of free images.
These changes have had negative impacts, as freelance contributors
have waited up to six months for checks and the
Britannica
staff have gone years without pay rises.
Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc. now owns registered
trademarks on the words
Britannica,
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Macropædia,
Micropædia, and
Propædia, as well as on its
thistle logo. It has exercised its trademark
rights as recently as 2005.
Competition
As the
Britannica is a general encyclopaedia, it does not
seek to compete with specialised encyclopaedias such as the
Encyclopaedia of
Mathematics or the
Dictionary of the Middle
Ages, which can devote much more space to their chosen
topics. In its first years, the
Britannica's main
competitor was the general encyclopaedia of
Ephraim Chambers and, soon thereafter,
Rees's Cyclopaedia and
Coleridge's Encyclopaedia
Metropolitana. In the 20th century, successful competitors
included
Collier's
Encyclopedia, the
Encyclopedia Americana, and the
World Book
Encyclopedia. Each of these encyclopaedias has qualities
that make it outstanding, such as exceptionally clear writing or
superb illustrations . Nevertheless, from the 9th edition onwards,
the
Britannica was widely considered to have the greatest
authority of any general English language encyclopaedia, especially
because of its broad coverage and eminent authors. However, the
print version of the
Britannica is significantly more
expensive than its competitors.
Since the early 1990s, the
Britannica has faced new
challenges from digital information sources.
The Internet,
facilitated by the development of search engine, has grown into a common
source of information for many people, and provides easy access to
reliable original sources and expert opinions, thanks in part to
initiatives such as Google Books,
MIT
's release of its educational materials and
the open PubMed Central library of
the National Library of
Medicine. In general, the Internet tends to provide more
current coverage than print media, due to the ease with which
material on the Internet can be updated. In rapidly changing fields
such as science, technology, politics, culture and modern history,
the
Britannica has struggled to stay up-to-date, a problem
first analysed systematically by its former editor
Walter Yust. Although the
Britannica is
now available both in multimedia form and over the Internet, its
preeminence is being challenged by other online encyclopaedias,
such as
Wikipedia.
Print encyclopedias
The
Encyclopædia Britannica has been compared with other
print encyclopaedias, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A
well-known comparison is that of
Kenneth
Kister, who gave a qualitative and quantitative comparison of
the
Britannica with two comparable encyclopaedias,
Collier's
Encyclopedia and the
Encyclopedia Americana.
For the
quantitative analysis, ten articles were selected at
random (circumcision, Charles Drew, Galileo,
Philip Glass, heart disease, IQ, panda bear, sexual
harassment, Shroud of
Turin
and Uzbekistan
) and letter grades (A–D, F) were awarded in four
categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity, and recency. In all
four categories and for all three encyclopaedias, the four average
grades fell between
B− and B+,
chiefly because not one encyclopaedia had an article on
sexual harassment in 1994. In the accuracy
category, the
Britannica received one
D and eight
As.
Encyclopedia Americana received eight
As, and
Collier's received one
D and
seven
As; thus,
Britannica received an average
score of 92% for accuracy to
Americana’s 95% and
Collier's’ 92%. The 1994
Britannica was faulted
for publishing an inflammatory story about
Charles Drew that had long been discredited. In
the timeliness category,
Britannica averaged an 86% to
Americana’s 90% and
Collier's’ 85%. After a more
thorough
qualitative comparison of all three
encyclopedias,
Kister recommended
Collier's
Encyclopedia as the superior encyclopaedia, primarily on
the strength of its excellent writing, balanced presentation and
easy navigation.
Digital encyclopedias on optical media
The most notable competitor of the
Britannica among
CD/DVD-ROM digital encyclopedias was
Encarta, now discontinued, a modern, multimedia
encyclopedia that incorporated three print encyclopedias:
Funk and Wagnalls',
Collier's and the
New Merit
Scholar.
Encarta was the
top-selling multimedia encyclopaedia, based on total U.S. retail
sales from January 2000 to February 2006. Both occupied the same
price range, with the
2007 Encyclopædia Britannica
Ultimate CD or DVD costing
US$50 and the Microsoft Encarta Premium
2007 DVD costing
US$45. The
Britannica contains 100,000 articles and
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and
Thesaurus (U.S. only), and offers Primary and Secondary
School editions.
Encarta contained 66,000 articles, a
user-friendly Visual Browser, interactive maps, math, language and
homework tools, a U.S. and UK dictionary, and a youth edition. Like
Encarta, the
Britannica has been criticised for
being biased towards United States audiences; the United
Kingdom-related articles are updated less often, maps of the United
States are more detailed than those of other countries, and it
lacks a UK dictionary. Like the
Britannica,
Encarta was available online by subscription,
although some content may be accessed for free.
Internet encyclopedias
Online alternatives to the
Britannica include
Wikipedia, a freely available
Web-based
free-content encyclopedia. A key difference
between the two encyclopaedias lies in article authorship. The 699
Macropædia articles are
generally written by identified contributors, and the roughly
65,000
Micropædia articles
are the work of the editorial staff and identified outside
consultants. Thus, a
Britannica article either has known
authorship or a set of possible authors (the editorial staff). With
the exception of the editorial staff, most of the
Britannica's contributors are experts in their field—some
are Nobel laureates. By contrast, the articles of Wikipedia are
written by a community of editors with varying levels of expertise:
most editors do not claim any particular expertise; of those who
do, many are
anonymous and have no
verifiable credentials. Another difference is the pace of article
change: the
Britannica is published in print every few
years, while Wikipedia's articles are likely to change frequently.
Wikipedia has been criticised
in other respects as well, and some even venture to say that
Wikipedia cannot hope to rival the
Britannica in
accuracy.
On 14 December 2005, the scientific journal
Nature reported that, within 42
randomly selected general science articles, there were 162 mistakes
in Wikipedia versus 123 in
Britannica. In its detailed
20-page rebuttal,
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc. characterized
Nature's study as flawed and
misleading and called for a "prompt" retraction. It noted that two
of the articles in the study were taken from a
Britannica
year book, and not the encyclopedia; another two were from
Compton's Encyclopedia (called the
Britannica Student
Encyclopedia on the company's web site). The rebuttal went on
to mention that some of the articles presented to reviewers were
combinations of several articles, and that other articles were
merely excerpts but were penalised for factual omissions. The
company also noted that several facts classified as errors by
Nature were minor spelling variations, and that several of
its alleged errors were matters of interpretation.
Nature
defended its story and declined to retract, stating that, as it was
comparing Wikipedia with the web version of Britannica, it used
whatever relevant material was available on Britannica's
website.
Interviewed in February 2009, the MD of Britannica UK said:
Edition summary
Edition/supplement |
Publication years |
Size |
Chief editor(s) |
Notes |
1st |
1768–1771 |
3 volumes, 2,670 pages, 160 plates |
William
Smellie |
Largely the work of one editor, Smellie; 30 articles longer
than three pages |
2nd |
1777–1784 |
10 volumes, 8,595 pages, 340 plates |
James Tytler |
150 long articles; pagination errors; all maps under
"Geography" article |
3rd |
1788–1797 |
18 volumes, 14,579 pages, 542 plates |
Colin Macfarquhar and George Gleig |
£42,000 profit on 10,000 copies sold;
introduction of chemical symbols |
supplement to 3rd |
1801 |
2 volumes, 1,624 pages, 50 plates |
George Gleig |
Copyright owned by Thomas Bonar,
first dedication to monarch |
4th |
1801–1809 |
20 volumes, 16,033 pages, 581 plates |
James Millar |
Authors first allowed to retain copyright |
5th |
1817 |
20 volumes, 16,017 pages, 582 plates |
James Millar |
Financial losses by Millar and Andrew
Bell's heirs; EB rights sold to Archibald Constable |
supplement to 5th |
1816–1824 |
6 volumes, 4,933 pages, 125 plates1 |
Macvey Napier |
Famous contributors recruited, such as Sir Humphry Davy, Sir
Walter Scott, Malthus |
6th |
1820–1823 |
20 volumes |
Charles Maclaren |
Constable went bankrupt on
19 January 1826; EB rights eventually secured by Adam Black |
7th |
1830–1842 |
21 volumes, 17,101 pages, 506 plates, 187-page index |
Macvey Napier, assisted by
James Browne, LLD |
Widening network of famous contributors, such as Sir David Brewster, Thomas de Quincey, Antonio Panizzi |
8th |
1853–1860 |
21 volumes, 17,957 pages, 402 plates; separate 239-page index,
published 18612 |
Thomas Stewart Traill |
Many long articles were copied from the 7th edition; 344
contributors including William Thomson |
9th |
1875–1889 |
24 volumes, plus one index volume |
Thomas Spencer Baynes
(1875–80); then W. Robertson Smith |
Some carry-over from 8th edition, but mostly a new work; high
point of scholarship; pirated widely in the U.S.3 |
10th,
supplement to 9th |
1902–1903 |
11 volumes, plus the 24 volumes of the 9th4 |
Sir
Donald Mackenzie Wallace
and Hugh Chisholm in London ; Arthur T. Hadley & Franklin Henry Hooper in New York City |
American partnership bought EB rights on 9 May 1901;
high-pressure sales methods |
11th |
1910–1911 |
28 volumes, plus one index volume |
Hugh Chisholm in London, Franklin Henry Hooper in New York
City |
Another high point of scholarship and writing; more articles
than the 9th, but shorter and simpler; financial difficulties for
owner, Horace Everett Hooper;
EB rights sold to Sears
Roebuck in 1920 |
12th,
supplement to 11th |
1921–1922 |
3 volumes, plus the 28 volumes of the 11th5 |
Hugh Chisholm in London, Franklin Henry Hooper in New York
City |
Summarised state of the world before, during, and after
World War I |
13th,
supplement to 11th |
1926 |
3 volumes, plus the 28 volumes of the 11th6 |
James Louis Garvin in London,
Franklin Henry Hooper in New York City |
Replaced 12th edition volumes; improved perspective of the
events of 1910–1926 |
14th |
1929–1933 |
24 volumes 7 |
James Louis Garvin in London,
Franklin Henry Hooper in New York City |
Publication just before Great Depression was financially
catastrophic |
revised 14th |
1933–1973 |
24 volumes 7 |
Franklin Henry Hooper until 1938; then Walter Yust, Harry
Ashmore, Warren E. Preece, William
Haley |
Began continuous revision in 1936: every article revised at
least twice every decade |
15th |
1974–1984 |
30 volumes 8 |
Warren E. Preece, then Philip W. Goetz |
Introduced three-part structure; division of articles into
Micropædia and Macropædia; Propædia Outline of Knowledge; separate
index eliminated |
1985–present |
32 volumes 9 |
Philip W. Goetz, then Robert
McHenry, currently Dale
Hoiberg |
Restored two-volume index; merged Micropædia and
Macropædia articles; slightly longer overall; new versions
issued every few years |
Edition notes
1Supplement to the fourth, fifth,
and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. With
preliminary dissertations on the history of the
sciences.
2 The 8th to 14th editions included a
separate index volume.
3 The 9th edition featured articles by
notables of the day, such as James
Maxwell on electricity and magnetism, and William Thomson (who
became Lord Kelvin) on heat.
4 The 10th edition included a maps
volume and a cumulative index volume for the 9th and 10th edition
volumes: the new volumes, constituting, in combination with the
existing volumes of the 9th ed., the 10th ed. … and also
supplying a new, distinctive, and independent library of reference
dealing with recent events and developments
5 Vols. 30–32 … the
New volumes constituting, in combination with the twenty-nine
volumes of the eleventh edition, the twelfth edition
6 This supplement replaced the
previous supplement: The three new supplementary volumes
constituting, with the volumes of the latest standard edition, the
thirteenth edition.
7 This edition was the first to be
kept up to date by continual (usually annual) revision.
8 The 15th edition (introduced as
"Britannica 3") was published in three parts: a 10-volume
Micropædia (which contained short articles and served as
an index), a 19-volume Macropædia, plus the
Propædia (see text). It was reorganised in 1985 to have 12
and 17 volumes in the Micro- and
Macropædia.
9 In 1985, the system was modified by
adding a separate two-volume index; the Macropædia
articles were further consolidated into fewer, larger ones (for
example, the previously separate articles about the 50 U.S. states
were all included into the "United States of America" article),
with some medium-length articles moved to the
Micropædia.
The first CD-ROM edition was issued in 1994. At that time also an
online version was offered for paid subscription. In 1999 this was
offered for free, and no revised print versions appeared. The
experiment was ended in 2001 and a new printed set was issued in
2001. |
See also
References
- The Britannica's 1st edition is described as
"deplorably inaccurate and unscientific" in places.
- Mortimer J. Adler, A Guidebook to Learning: for the
lifelong pursuit of wisdom. MacMillan Publishing Company, New
York, 1986. p.88
- See also the list of 2007
Macropædia articles.
- According to Kister (1994, reference 1 above), the initial 15th
edition (1974) required over $32 million dollars to produce.
- Aside from providing an excellent summary of the
Britannica's history and early spin-off products, this
article also describes the life-cycle of a typical
Britannica edition. A new edition typically begins with
strong sales that gradually decay as the encyclopaedia becomes
outdated. When work on a new edition is begun, word leaks out and
sales of the old edition effectively stop, just at the time when
the fiscal needs are greatest: a new editorial staff must be
assembled, articles commissioned, etc. Elkan
Harrison Powell identified this cyclic fluctuation of income as
a key danger to the fiscal health of any encyclopaedia, one that he
hoped to overcome with his innovative policy of continuous
revision.
- corporate.britannica.com
- Ramaswamy, Krishnan ed. Invading the Sacred. 2007. New
Delhi. Rupa and co.
- "The Interpretation of Gods", by Amy Braverman,
University of Chicago Magazine: 97:2 (2004)
- Children's Britannica. ed. John Armitage. 1960. Encyclopædia
Britannica Ltd. London.
- Collaboration and the Voices of Experts Jorge
Cauz, 3 June 2008
- blog.wired.com
- Staff writer. " Encyclopaedia Britannica dips toe in Wiki
waters". PC Pro, June
9, 2008.
- Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. " Usage Agreement - Terms of Use". Accessed December 19,
2008.
- Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. "Wikipedia:Copyrights". Accessed September 4,
2009.
- Britannica looking to give Wikipedia a run for its
money with online editing. TG Daily
- Encyclopedia Britannica takes on Wikipedia. Digital
Journal
- Encyclopaedia Britannica fights back against
Wikipedia. The Telegraph. 01-22-2009
- Britannica 2.0 shows Wikipedia how it's done.
Times
Online. 01-22-2009
- Britannica reaches out to the web.
BBC. 01-24-2009
- Franklin Henry Hooper - obituary Time
Monday, Aug. 26, 1940
- Encyclopædia Britannica Board of Editors.
Britannica.com. Retrieved on 2008-02-24
- Sales figures for January 2000 – February 2006 as provided by
the NPD Group.
- Giles, Jim (2005-12-15). " Challenges of being a Wikipedian" In: "
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head".
Nature 438: 900–901. . Retrieved on
2007-04-11.
- " A Stand Against Wikipedia", Inside Higher
Ed (26 January 2007). Retrieved on 27 January 2007.
Further reading
External links
- Official site:
- Historical articles:
- Earlier editions (in the public
domain in the U.S.A.):
- Recent events:
- A comparison of the two encyclopedias by Panagiota Alevizou,
published in the Educational Technology
& Society journal.
- Business history: