Encyclopedias

EncyclopediasFrom tomes to technology

LIB 640 Information Sources and Services

Summer 2012

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What is an encyclopedia?

An encyclopedia is a set of books with articles on every topic you can think of

Each article in the encyclopedia gives you information about the topic

Guide words on used in an encyclopedia to help you find information

An encyclopedia has the topics in alphabetical order.

Click on the girl above to practice using an encyclopedia.

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Origin of the word? The term

The word encyclopaedia comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία,[8] from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία,[9] transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning “general education”: enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning “circular, recurrent, required regularly, general”[10] + paideia (παιδεία), meaning “education, rearing of a child”.[11] but it was reduced to a single word due to an error[12] by copyists of Latin manuscripts. Together, the phrase literally translates as “complete instruction” or “complete knowledge”.

From “Encyclopedia” on Wikipedia

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Largest and earliest encyclopedia?

Yongle dadian, ( Chinese: “Great Canon [literally, Vast Documents] of the Yongle Era”) Chinese compilation that was the world’s largest

known encyclopaedia. Compiled during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) by thousands of Chinese scholars under the direction of the Yongle emperor (reigned 1402–24), it was completed in 1408.

Encyclopedia Britannica entryhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/654973/Yongle-dadian

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The first English encyclopedia in all but name

“the first English encyclopaedia arranged in alphabetical order” and also “appears to be the first technical dictionary in any language.”John Harris - Lexicon Technicum - 1704 first edition

See also John Harris - Lexicon Technicum - 1708 second edition

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A more famous revision of Lexicon Technicum

Ephraim Chambers (c.1680-1740) Cyclopaedia. First edition, 1728

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“Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts” was an encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1766, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives

A French “revision” of Chambers

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Diderot’s work translated

See the Introduction for more information about this project

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Followed by a familiar title

First published in Edinburgh, Scotland,

in 1768; was published one section at a time, in “fascicles,” over a three-year period, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

2nd edition 10 vols. 1777-84. 9th ed. 1875-89. “Scholar’s edition.” 11th ed. 1910-11 first under US

ownership, but still with British authorship. Full text online at LoveToKnow Classic Encyclopedia.

Move to Chicago and continuous revision in 1930s

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Encyclopedia or Dictionary?

Why both? the dictionary of arts and sciences was the more

direct predecessor of the modern encyclopedia. e. g. John Harris’s Lexicon technicum (2 vols., 1704,

1710); and Ephraim Chambers’s (1680–1740) Cyclopaedia (2 vols., 1728).

These works consisted of entries on terms (mainly from the arts and sciences) in alphabetical order, but they professed to be more than definitions of words by also being descriptions of things. Encyclopedism - Alphabetical Encyclopedias

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Britannica’s big change

Britannica 3 (AKA 15th ed.). First publ. 1974 3 sections:

Propaedia: single volume systematic outline of human knowledge

Micropaedia: 10 vols., 102,000 entries, short articles

Macropaedia: 19 vols, 4,000+ articles, expansions of selected topics from Micropaedia.

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Britannica’s next big change

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/

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From print to electronic

The first electronic encyclopedias, such as Grolier's Academic American Encyclopedia on CD-ROM (1985), were basically digitized versions of the printed sets. But by the early 1990s publishers began adding audio, video, and Internet links, making them fully interactive multimedia platforms, and often gave them away with the purchase of a new computer. By 2002 there were several general encyclopedias available in CD-ROM format, including World Book, Encarta, Grolier's, and Britannica.

US History Encyclopedia: Encyclopedias

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A popular children’s encyclopedia

First published in 1971, World Book Encyclopedia is the best selling print Encyclopedia set in the world. The World Book Encyclopedia presents information in an accessible, usable form that promotes learning. World Book Encyclopedia 2012 is designed to meet the reference needs of students from elementary school through high school.

World Book Encyclopedia 2012

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And then there was Wikipedia

Actually, Nupedia came first: Nupedia was a Web-based encyclopedia whose articles

were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief. Nupedia lasted from March of 2000[1] until September of 2003, and is mostly known now as the predecessor of the free wiki encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

See also Larry Sanger’s The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nupedia.com (archived)

Type of site Internet encyclopedia project

Nupedia was organized by subject, with subject editors

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But what is Wikipedia?

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Anyone can edit?

What is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written

collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour. All of these changes are recorded in article histories and recent changes. For a more detailed account of the project, see About Wikipedia.

Don't be afraid to edit – anyone can edit almost every page, and we are encouraged to be bold!

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Discussion about Wikipedia

Library Journal: . . . once given the freedom (to edit), will people

abuse it? Most certainly. Many observers have already expressed concerns over Wikipedia’s shortcomings, pointing to valid examples of editorial inferiority, yet many others have been charmed by its concept and astonished by its up-to-dateness. Some have gone so far as to claim they prefer it to the venerable (albeit not free) Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.

I Want My Wikipedia! by Barry X. Miller, Karl Helicher, & Teresa Berry -- Library Journal, 4/1/2006

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Harvard debate page

This is a Harvard Business School case study about

a specific article on Wikipedia, but it includes some useful review material about Encyclopedias in general, Wikipedia's Birth, Nupedia, the evolution From Nupedia to Wikipedia, a state of the website Wikipedia in 2006, and a review of the Debates and Controversies

Harvard Business School Professors Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew

P. McAfee prepared this case. . . . HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.

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Should we dismiss Wikipedia?

Probably not, just be careful, though! Because of its up-to-date information, Wikipedia will

attract high school and college students. However, as with much information floating around in cyberspace, a healthy degree of skepticism and skill at winnowing fact from opinion are required.

Karl Helicher, Director of Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA in I Want My Wikipedia!

Despite its flaws, however, Wikipedia should not be dismissed. Although the writing is not exceptional, good content abounds.

Teresa Berry, Associate Professor/Science Librarian at the Univ. of Tennessee Libs., Knoxville in I Want My Wikipedia!

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Colbert’s Countercurrent

http://wikiality.wikia.com/

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One solution to Wikipedia

Welcome to Citizendium, an endeavor to provide free knowledge with the highest standards of writing, reliability, and comprehensiveness. We welcome anyone who wants to share information by writing well-researched and authoritative articles on virtually any subject.

We have 16,263 articles at different stages of development, of which 164 are expert-approved.

But see: Citizendium turns five, but the Wikipedia fork is dead in the water, Oct 27 2011

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What is an encyclopedia for?

Authority and dependability? Or a quick source of “facts”? Or what?

OR

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But is it OR any more?

Is Britannica Going Wiki? Encyclopaedia Britannica recently introduced some new

features to Britannica Online that make it easy for our readers to suggest edits, revisions, updates, amplifications, and corrections to our articles and to submit their handiwork to our editors for consideration.

Ha! User-generated content, you say. Well, yes. But a wiki? No. Because the operative word in the paragraph above is suggest. Britannica users don’t have the ability or authority to publish the edits they propose; only Britannica editors can do that, and that’s the way it will stay.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009

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Teaching the encyclopedia

Kentucky's Learning Goals and Academic Expectations Academic Expectations: AE 1.1

Students use reference tools such as dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias, and computer reference programs and research tools such as interviews and surveys to find the information they need to meet specific demands, explore interests, or solve specific problems.

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A sample encyclopedia lesson