Britannica Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia Britannica (Latin: Encyclopædia Britannica) is an English-language encyclopedia of general knowledge, Published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a private company. Articles in the Britannica are aimed at adult readers, and are written by a pool of 100 full-time editors and nearly 4,000 expert contributors,^{[citation needed ]} which have included 110 Nobel Prize winners and five US Presidents. These articles are generally considered accurate, reliable, and well-written. It is widely recognized as the most erudite encyclopedia published in English.

The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print (although no longer in print). Its first edition dates from 1768 to 1771, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and quickly gained great popularity and size, counting in its third edition in 1801 with 21 volumes. Its great growth helped to recruit eminent contributors, so the ninth (1875-1889) and eleventh edition (1911) were considered the most famous for its scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the eleventh edition, the Britannica gradually abridged and simplified its articles to broaden its North American market. In 1933, it became the first encyclopedia to adopt a policy of "continual revisions", in which the encyclopedia is continually reprinted and each article is updated on a regular schedule.

On March 13, 2012, the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica announced that it was phasing out of print in favor of the web edition, which debuted in 1994.

The current fifteenth edition has a unique three-part structure: a Micropædia of 12 volumes of short articles (usually containing less than 750 words), Macropædia 17 volumes of long articles (containing between 2 and 310 pages) and a single volume Propædia providing a hierarchical outline of human knowledge. The Micropædia is intended for quick fact finding and is a guide to the Macropædia; readers are encouraged to study the outline of the Propædia to understand the context of a subject and to find other more detailed articles.

The size of the Britannica, broadly speaking, has remained constant over the past seventy years, with around 40,000,000 (forty million) words in 500,000 (five hundred thousand) topics. Although publication has been in the United States since 1901, the encyclopedia has maintained its traditional British spelling by writing, for example, labor instead of the American term labor.

Over the course of its history, the Britannica has struggled to reap financial benefits, a common problem among many encyclopedias. Some articles in past editions have been criticized for inaccuracy, bias, or misrepresentation. have been written by insufficiently qualified contributors. Likewise, the accuracy of some parts of the current edition has been questioned; however, these criticisms have been rejected by the administration of the encyclopedia.

History

One of his detailed drawings:
The armoured sphere.

The Britannica has changed hands numerous times; previous owners include Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and Company, and William Benton. The current owner of the company Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. is Jacqui Safra, a Swiss millionaire and actor. Recent advances in information technology and the rise of electronic encyclopedias, such as Microsoft Encarta (currently out of print) and the Internet, have reduced the demand for print encyclopedias. To remain competitive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., has emphasized the reputation of the Britannica, reduced its price and production costs, and developed electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD, and on the Web. Since the early 1930s, the company has also promoted derivative works as reference works.

The product of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Britannica was first published in Edinburgh by Adam and Charles Black. Unlike the L'Encyclopédie (French encyclopedia), the Britannica was an extremely conservative publication. Later editions were generally dedicated to the current monarch. For the eighth and ninth editions, his publication moved from Scotland to London and became associated with The Times newspaper in the 1870s. For the eleventh edition the publication was associated with Cambridge University. The trademark and publishing rights were sold after its eleventh edition to Sears Roebuck and Company and moved to Chicago, United States, where it remains. Its current publisher is Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.

By 2004, the Britannica had 75,000 articles with more than 44,000,000 (forty-four million) words. It has a staff of 19 editors and the collaboration of 4,000 experts. It is published in print (in 32 volumes, costing $1,400), appears on the Internet (with short summaries of articles viewable free of charge and full texts available for $10 per month or $60 per year), and is available on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM (for $50). The 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, from 1911, is currently in the public domain.^{[citation needed]}

Editions

Frontispício de la primera edición de la Encyclopædia Britannica.

The Britannica has been published in 15 official editions, with several companion volumes since the 3rd and 5th editions (see table below). To be exact, the 10th Edition is just a companion to the 9th Edition, just as the 12th and 13th Editions complement the 11th Edition. The 15th edition underwent a massive reorganization in 1985, but the updated version is still known as the 15th edition.

Throughout its history, Britannica has had two objectives: to be an excellent reference book and to provide teaching material for those who wish to study. In 1974, the 15th edition adopted a third objective: to systematize all human knowledge. The history of Britannica can be divided into five major eras, marked by major changes in the management or reorganization of the encyclopedia.

First era

In the first era (1st-6th edition, 1768-1826), Britannica was administered by its original founders, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and, by some of their friends such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable. The Britannica was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh as the Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled on a New Plan. It was seen as a reaction and a provocation to Denis Diderot's French Encyclopédie (published between 1751-1766), which in turn had been inspired by the English Cyclopédia (Universal Dictionary of Arts). and Science). Britannica was primarily a Scottish company, symbolized by a thistle-like logo, Scotland's floral emblem. The founder of the encyclopedia was one of the most famous representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment. In this era, Britannica grew from a three-volume set (1st edition) produced by a young publisher William Smellie to 20 volumes written by numerous personalities. Although several other encyclopedias, such as Rees's Cyclopaedia and Coleridge's Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, competed with the Britannica, these competitors went out of business or stopped publishing due to disagreements between their publishers. By the end of this era, the Britannica had built a network of illustrious collaborators, mainly through personal friendships with the publishers, notably Constable and Gleig.

Second era

The mid-19th century editions of the Encyclopedia British They included seminal research such as the article on Egypt by Thomas Young, which included the translation of hieroglyphics in the Rosetta Stone.

During the second era (7th-9th editions, 1827-1901), the Britannica was administered by the Edinburgh publisher, A & C Black. Although some contributors were recruited out of personal friendships with the editors-in-chief, most notably Macvey Napier, others went to the Britannica because of their growing reputation. Contributors often came from other countries and included the world's most respected authorities in their respective fields. A general index was included for the first time in the 7th edition, a practice continued until 1974. The first English editor-in-chief was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who supervised the production of the famous 9th edition; commonly called Scholar's Edition "(Edición erudite)" as the edition of the Britannica most aimed at the student public. However, by the end of the 19th century, the 9th edition was out of date and the Britannica was facing serious economic problems.

Third era

In the third era (10th-14th editions, 1901-1973), the Britannica was managed by American businessmen, who introduced an aggressive expansion strategy, using the marketing and mail order sales, in order to try to increase the profits and profitability of the product. They also simplified the Britannica articles, reducing their content but making them more understandable to the general public. The 10th edition was hastily produced as a supplement to the 9th, but the edition that is recognized for its excellence is the 11th; owner Horace Hooper put enormous effort into perfecting the edition. When Hooper and the Britannica fell into financial difficulties, the Britannica was owned by Sears Roebuck for 18 years. (1920-1923, 1928-1943). In 1932, the vice president of the Sears chain, Elkan Harrison Powell, assumed the presidency of the Britannica; in 1936, he began a policy of continuous revision (still practiced today), where each article is reviewed and updated at least twice every decade. This strategy contrasts with previous practice, where articles did not change until a new edition was produced, approximately every 25 years; there were even articles that were copied unchanged from previous editions. Powell aggressively developed educational projects to enhance the reputation of the Britannica in the United States. In 1943, the chairmanship passed to William Benton, who managed the Britannica until his death in 1973. Benton also created the Benton Foundation, which ran the Britannica until 1996. In 1968 the Britannica celebrated its bicentenary.

Fourth era

Announcement of the 11th edition, in the United States in May 1913, in the National Geographic magazine.

In the fourth era (15th edition, 1974-1994), the Britannica introduced its 15th edition, which was reorganized into three parts: the Micropædia, the Macropædia and the Propædia. Influenced by Mortimer Adler (a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica since 1949, and its chief since 1974, as well as director of editorial planning for the fifteenth edition of the Britannica since 1965), the Britannica began to seek to be not only a reference and educational tool, but also to systematize all human knowledge. The absence of a separate index and the grouping of articles into two parallel encyclopedias (the Micro- and Macropædia) caused a storm of criticism of the 15th initial edition.

In response, the 15th edition was completely reorganized and indexed for a reissue in 1985. This second version of the 15th edition continues to be published and revised; the latest version is from 2010. The official title of the 15th edition is New Encyclopædia Britannica ("the new Encyclopædia Britannica"), although it has also been called Britannica 3.

Fifth era

In the fifth era (1994-present), development of digital versions of the Britannica began, which are distributed via optical discs and over the Internet. In 1996, the Britannica was purchased from the Benton Foundation by Jacqui Safra, at a much lower price than estimated, due to the company's financial difficulties. The Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. split in 1999. One party retained the company name and continued to develop the traditional (print) version; the other party, Britannica.com Inc., developed the digital versions. Since 2001, these two companies have shared a single CEO, originally Ilan Yeshua, who has continued Powell's strategy for the growth of the Britannica by introducing new products under the Britannica. In March 2012 he announced the end of the paper edition, leaving only the digital edition.

Dedications

The Britannica was dedicated to the reigning monarch of Great Britain from 1788 to 1901 and later, due to its sale to an American corporation, to the British monarch and the president of the United States. Consequently, the eleventh edition is "dedicated by permission to His Majesty George V, King of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Overseas Dominions, Emperor of India, and to William Howard Taft, President of the United States of America." The order of the two dedications has been changing along with the relative power between the president of the United States and the monarch of Great Britain, and with the sales of "Britannica" in this countries; the 1954 version of the fourteenth edition is Dedicated by permission to the heads of state of the two English-speaking peoples, Dwight David Eisenhower, President of the United States of America, and Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth Second.Continuing the tradition, the 2007 version of the fifteenth edition is "Dedicated by permission to the current President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, and to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth Second."

Popular criticism and assessment

Reputation

A print by Andrew Bell of the first edition.

Sword in the British Encyclopedia.

Since the third edition, the Britannica has received a reputation for excellence. Several editions, from the third to the ninth, were copied and sold without authorization in the United States, beginning to Dobson's Encyclopædia (which consisted essentially of a copy of the third edition of the "Britannica" encyclopedia, in a more patriotic style, adapted for American readers). For the launch of the fourteenth edition, the magazine Time honored the Britannica by calling it the 'Patriarch of the Library'. In a related announcement, naturalist William Beebe was quoted as saying that the Britannica it was beyond comparison because there is no competitor. Several references to the Britannica can be found throughout English literature, most notably in one of the Sherlock stories Holmes favorite by Arthur Conan Doyle, "The League of Red-Headed Men". This story was highlighted by the Lord Mayor of London, Gilbert Inglefield, during the bicentenary of the Britannica.

The Britannica has a reputation for summarizing all human knowledge. To further their education, many have dedicated themselves to reading the entire Britannica, taking anywhere from three to twenty-two years to achieve it. When Fat'h Ali became the Shah of Persia in 1797, he was given a complete set of the third edition of the Britannica, which he read through in three years; after this feat, he extended his royal title by adding "Most Formidable Lord And Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica". Writer George Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the entire ninth edition- excluding scientific papers - 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 marine expedition. More recently, A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire magazine, read the entire 2002 version of the fifteenth edition, describing his experiences in the well-received 2004 book The Know-It-All: One Man&# 39;s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. Only two people are known to have read two separate editions: author C. S. Forester and Amos Urban Shirk, an American businessman, who read the eleventh and fourteenth editions, spending three hours a night for four and a half years reading the eleventh. Several editors-in-chief of the Britannica have probably read its editions in their entirety, such as William Smellie (1st edition), William Robertson Smith (9th edition), and Walter Yust (14th edition)..

Awards

The Britannica continues to win awards today. The Britannica online won the Codie Award for "Best Online Consumer Information Service"; this award is given by Software and Information Industry Association in recognition of the best products within the software category. In 2006 the Britannica was once again a finalist. Likewise, the CD/DVD-ROM edition of the Britannica received in 2004 the "Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers", and the Codie Award in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Topic coverage

As a general encyclopedia, the Britannica seeks to describe the widest possible range of subjects. The topics are chosen for reference in the Propædia Outline of Knowledge ('Knowledge Outline'). The percentage of articles dedicated to the main topics is distributed as follows (Macropædia):

• Geography (26 %)
• Biographies (14 %)
• Biology and medicine (11 %)
• Literature (7 %)
• Physics and astronomy (6 %)
• Religion (5 %)
• Art (4 %)
• Western Philosophy (4 %)
• Laws (3 %).

A follow-up study found that in Micropædia articles on geography accounted for 25% of articles, science for 18%, social sciences for 17%, biographies for 17%, and all others humanities the remaining 25%. In 1992, one reviewer judged the "scope, depth, and catholicity of Britannica's coverage to be unsurpassed by any other encyclopedia."

The Britannica does not spell out similar issues in an equivalent way; for example, Buddhism and most other religions are conjugated in a single Macropædia article, when there are 14 articles dedicated to Christianity, which make up about half of the articles on religion. However, the Britannica has been praised as the least biased of the encyclopedias marketed in the West, and lauded for its biographies of important women of all ages.

One can say without fear of contradicting the 15th edition of the Britannica gives non-Western cultural, social and scientific developments more attention than any general encyclopedia in English language currently on the market.

Kenneth Kister, Kister's Best Encyclopedias (1994)

Criticism

The Britannica has also been criticized, especially when its editions were becoming outdated. Due to the financial costs of producing a completely new edition of the Britannica, its publishers generally delay updating as long as possible, as long as it is economically viable (usually twenty-five years). Despite the policy of continual revision, the fourteenth edition had become seriously out of date in thirty-five years (1929-1964). When the American physicist Harvey Einbinder detailed his faults in his 1964 book, The Myth of the Britannica , the encyclopedia decided to release the fifteenth edition, which required ten years of work. It's hard to keep the Britannica up to date; a recent reviewer wrote, “It's not hard to find articles that are out of date or in need of revision,” noting that longer Macropædia articles are probably more out of date than shorter Micropædia articles. i>. The information in the Micropædia is sometimes inconsistent with the articles in the Macropædia, due to the lack of updating in one of the two. Bibliographies of Macropædia articles have been criticized as being more out of date than the articles themselves.

Bias

Authorities ranging from Virginia Woolf to academic professors criticized the 11th edition of the British for having bourgeois and archaic views on art, literature and the social sciences. For example, She was reproached for not treating the work of Sigmund Freud. A contemporary Cornell University 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 personnel controls, most general psychology side articles are not tailored to the requirements of the intelligent reader."

Editorial Decisions

The Britannica is occasionally criticized for decisions made by its editors. Due to its roughly constant size, the encyclopedia has needed to reduce or eliminate some of its topics to accommodate others, making some controversial decisions. The initial version of the fifteenth edition (1974-1985) was criticized for having drastically reduced or eliminated its coverage of children's literature, military decorations, and the French poet Joachim du Bellay; other editorial errors were also denounced, such as the inconsistent ordering of Japanese biographies. The removal of the index was condemned, as was the apparently arbitrary division of articles between Micropædia and Macropædia. In short, one reviewer called the initial 11th edition a nuanced flaw...which cares more about tinkering with its format than preserving information. More recently, reviewers of the American Library Association were surprised to find that most of the educational articles were removed from the 1992 Macropædia, along with the article on psychology.

Some Britannica contributors are occasionally wrong, or are not scientific. A notorious case in the early years of the Britannica was the rejection of Newton's theory of universal gravitation by George Gleig, the editor-in-chief of the 3rd edition (1788-1797), who wrote that gravity was caused by the element of fire. The Britannica, however, has advocated a scientific approach to emotional issues, as did William Robertson Smith in his articles on religions in the ninth edition, particularly stating that the Bible was not historically accurate (1875).

Racism and gender discrimination in previous editions

Critics have accused past editions of the Britannica of featuring racism and sexism. The 1911 Eleventh Edition describes the Ku Klux Klan as protector of the white race and as having a role in restoring order in the American South after the American Civil War, citing the need to control the black race, to prevent any mix of races and the frequent occurrence of rapes by black men of white women. Similarly, the article on "Civilization" argues in favor of eugenics, beginning with that it is irrational to propagate low levels of intelligence, to increase the ranks of the poor, disabled and criminals... who today constitute such a threatening obstacle to racial progress. The eleventh edition has no biography of Marie Curie, despite the fact that she won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 (the same year of publication), although she is briefly mentioned in her husband Pierre's biography Curie.

Inaccuracy

In 1912 the mathematician Louis Charles Karpinski criticized the 1911 edition for its inaccuracies in its articles on the history of mathematics, none of which had been written by specialists in the field. In 1917, critic Willard Huntington Wright published a book, Misinforming a Nation ("Misinforming a Nation"), which highlighted the inaccuracies and English bias of the eleventh editing, particularly humanities articles. Many of Wright's criticisms were fixed in later editions of the Britannica. However, his book was denounced as controversial by his contemporaries; for example, the New York Times wrote "rancor and little temperance...permeates the book", while the New Republic opined: " it is unfortunate for Mr. Wright's spiteful purpose that he proceeded in an unscientific spirit and gave so little objective justification for his criticisms." Another critic, the English publisher and former priest Joseph McCabe alleged, in his book Lies and fallacies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ('Lies and fallacies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica', 1947) that after the 11th edition the Britannica was censored under pressure from the Catholic Church.

The Britannica has always recognized that errors are inevitable in an encyclopedia. Speaking of its 3rd edition (1788-1797), its editor-in-chief George Gleig wrote perfection seems to be incompatible with the nature of works built on such a plan, and covering such a variety of subjects. More recently (in March 2006), the Britannica wrote we do not mean to imply that Britannica is free from error; we have never made such a claim.

Regarding errors in general, they already fall under the denomination of mental, typographical, or accidental, we are aware of having been able to point out a larger number than any critic. Men who know the innumerable difficulties of being in the execution of such extensive work will make appropriate concessions. We appeal to them, and we will be satisfied with the judgment they pronounce.

William Smellie, in the Preface to the 1st edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica

Current state

15.a edition of the Britannica. The initial volume with the green deck is the Propædia; volumes with red and black covers are of the Micropædia and the Macropædiarespectively. The last three volumes are: The 2002 book (black cover) and two index volumes (covered cian).

The 2007 edition incorporated the collaborations of the Nobel Prize in Economics Milton Friedman.

Printed version 2007

Since 1985, Britannica has been structured in four parts: the Micropædia, the Macropædia, the Propædia and a two-volume index. The articles themselves are found in the Micro and Macropædia, comprising 12 and 17 volumes respectively, each volume having around a thousand pages. The Macropædia of the 2007 edition develops 699 in-depth articles, each of them extending between 2 and 310 pages, together with the references and the name of the contributors. In contrast, the Micropædia consists of approximately 65,000 articles, the vast majority (over 97%) with fewer than 750 words, and do not contain references or the names of contributors. the Micropædia are intended to be used for quick fact-checking and to assist in finding more information through the Macropædia. The articles in the Macropædia are assumed to be reliable and a storehouse of information not covered anywhere else. The longest article (310 pages) is from the United States, and resulted from the union of each of the articles of the different states.

The contents and information of the Britannica can be found by following the existing cross-references in both the Micropædia and the Macropædia; however, these are rare, there being on average only one per page. Hence, readers of the encyclopedia are advised to consult instead the alphabetical index or the Propædia, which organizes the encyclopedia Britannica by subject.

The core of the Propædia is its "Scheme of Knowledge" which is intended to give a logical framework of all human knowledge. As a consequence, this "Scheme" is consulted by the editors of Britannica to decide which articles should be included in the encyclopedia. The outline is also intended as a study guide, putting topics in proper perspective and suggesting a list of articles for those who wish to study an in-depth topic. However, libraries claim that it is little used, and critics have even recommended its exclusion from the encyclopedia. The Propædia also contains color transparencies of human anatomy and numerous appendices listing staff members, advisers, and contributors to the three parts of the encyclopedia.

Together, the Micropædia and Macropædia contain up to 40,000,000 (forty million) words and 24,000 images. The two-volume index has 2,350 pages listing the 228,274 topics covered by the Britannica and the 474,675 subentries under those topics.

The encyclopedia normally uses British English instead of American English. For example, it uses colour and not color ("color" in Spanish), centre and not center ("centro" in Spanish) and encyclopaedia but not encyclopedia ("encyclopedia" in Spanish); however, on some occasions this is not the case, as for example in defense instead of defense ("defensa" in Spanish). Despite In addition, references to common alternative spellings of the word are provided in the entries, such as “Color: see Colour”.

Since 1936, articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica have been revised regularly, with at least 10% of the total revised each year. According to the Britannica website in 2007, 46% of its articles had been reviewed in the last three years; however, according to another website on the same encyclopedia, only 35% had been.

The alphabetical order of the articles contained in the encyclopedia follows strict rules. Both diacritics and non-English letters are ignored, numeric entries are ordered as if the number were written (the entry "1812, War of" should be searched for as if we were searching for "Eighteen-twelve, War of"). Articles with identical names are ordered first if they refer to people, then places, and lastly things. The rulers with the same name are arranged first alphabetically by country and then by chronology. Thus, Charles III of France (Charles III of France), comes before Charles I of England (Charles I of England), since the latter is listed as king of United Kingdom and Ireland, Great Britain and Ireland in English, which is alphabetically later than France, ('France' in Spanish). In the same way, the places that share a name are organized alphabetically by country and successively by smaller and smaller territorial divisions.

Related Printed Material

There are numerous abridged versions of the Britannica encyclopedia. The most important of these is the Britannica Concise Encyclopædia which consists of a single volume and contains 28,000 short articles condensing the 32 volumes of the original Encyclopædia Britannica.

Compton's by Britannica, first published in 2007, part of the former Compton's Encyclopedia whose publishing rights were acquired in that dated by Encyclopædia Britannica, and is aimed at adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17, and consists of 26 volumes and 11,000 pages.

A children's encyclopedia, Children's Britannica, was published by the London office in 1960, edited by John Armitage, and dedicated to the Prince of Wales, who at the time numbered with 12 years of age. The contributors were largely British and the editorial advisers were "The Headmaster, staff and students from William Austin Primary School, Luton, Bedfordshire".

There are also My First Britannica for ages 6-12 and Britannica Discovery Library for ages 3-6 (published 1974-1991).

Since 1938, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has published an annual book containing the highlights of the previous year. In addition, publications dating back to the 1994 edition are accessible on the Internet. The company also publishes numerous specialist works such as Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard (Wiley, 2006).

Editorial Carenzo (Chile) has launched a promotional version of the Britannica Concise Encyclopædia in Spanish for Latin America. This edition is authorized by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. (being based on its lesser but also notable Enciclopedia Hispánica), and according to the same publisher it meets the same quality standards as the English edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, since this Spanish edition would have been reviewed by the same editors of the English edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.^{[citation required]}

This promotional collection consists of 20 volumes, with around 24,000 entries and 4,800 photographs, similar in character to the Britannica Concise Encyclopædia. In Chile this collection is offered together with the newspaper El Mercurio. The same thing occurs in Peru, where a similar edition is offered together with the newspaper El Comercio. In Paraguay this promotional edition is distributed with the newspaper La Nación.^{[citation required]}

Other versions on digital support, internet and mobile telephony

The physicist, chemist and Nobel Prize Ernest Rutherford participated in the elaboration of the 11th edition

Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD contains over 55,000,000 (fifty-five million) words and just over 100,000 articles. This includes 73,645 Britannica articles classical, while the rest were obtained from the Britannica Student Encyclopædia, the Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia and the Britannica Book of the Year (1993-2004), plus a few "classic" from previous editions of the encyclopedia. The DVD also contains a range of complementary content such as maps, videos, audio clips, animations and web links. Also includes study tools, dictionary, and Merriam-Webster Thesaurus entries.

Encyclopædia Britannica Online is a website with more than 120,000 regularly updated articles. It has daily articles, updates and links to the online newspaper The New York Times and to the BBC website. There are weekly, monthly and yearly subscriptions. In addition, there are also special subscriptions available that are offered to schools, institutes and libraries. This type of institutional subscriptions represent an important part of the business of the Encyclopedia. Approximately 60% of the encyclopedia's revenue comes from operations on the website of which 15% are from subscriptions to the website itself.

The articles are accessible on the internet for free but this free access only allows viewing the first lines of each article. In early 2007, Britannica began to make articles fully accessible if they were linked from some other web page because such external links improve the position of the article in search engines. Internet.

On June 3, 2008, an initiative was announced enabling and facilitating collaboration between subject matter experts and online subject matter experts to develop Britannica's content on its website, all under the control of part of the encyclopedia's staff. Authors of contributions would be credited, but their publication gives Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. a perpetual and irrevocable license to those contributions. On 22 January 2009, Britannica President Jorge Cauz, announced that the company would accept editions and additions to its online encyclopedia by the general public, although as a condition a registration with the taxpayer's real name and address is required. All editions and contributions are reviewed and have to be approved by the professional staff of the company. This type of contributions, those of non-academic users, will be found in a separate section from the content contributed by experts hired by Britannica, in the same way that contributions by experts outside the company will be classified. Articles created and initiated by users, after being reviewed and approved, will also only be accessible in a special section of Britannica. the web, separated from the articles generated by the professionals contracted for it. The official Britannica material will bear a stamp that says Britannica checked to differentiate it from the material contributed by web users. Despite all the contributions of content that could be made by this means, the printed edition of the encyclopedia will not be affected.

On March 13, 2012, the Encyclopedia announced on its website that it was ceasing to print, after 244 years. The 2010 edition was the last to be printed, with only 8,000 copies sold worldwide. world. From now on they will focus on the web edition of the encyclopedia.

Staff and management

Collaborators

The 2007 print version has 4,411 contributors, many of them eminent in their respective fields, such as Nobel Prize Winner in Economics Milton Friedman, astronomer Carl Sagan, and surgeon Michael DeBakey. Approximately a quarter of the total. of employees have currently died, while another quarter are retired or emeritus.

Most (approximately 98%) contribute to a single article; however, in this 2007 edition, 64 contribute in three, 23 in four of them, 10 contribute in five articles and 8 in more than five. A particularly prolific collaborator is worth mentioning, Dr. Christine Sutton, from the University of Oxford, who contributes to 24 articles related to particle physics.

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Dale Hoiberg, a Sinologist, is Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Britannica. His predecessors as Editor-in-Chief included 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 are the current second editor and executive editor respectively. Some previous executive editors were John V. Dodge (1950-1964) and Philip W. Goetz.

The encyclopedia maintains an editorial staff of five senior editors and nine associate editors, supervised by Dale Hoiberg and four others. The editorial staff also help in the construction of articles in the Micropædia and in some sections of the Macropædia.

Editorial advisors

Britannica has a consultative editorial board, which includes 12 distinguished eminences:

• author Nicholas Carr,
• the history teacher of the Wendy Doniger religions,
• political economist Benjamin M. Friedman,
• the emeritus president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie H. Gelb,
• the computer scientist David Gelernter,
• Nobel Prize in Physics Murray Gell-Mann,
• President of Carnegie Corporation of New York Vartan Gregorian,
• the philosopher Thomas Nagel,
• the cognitive scientist Donald Norman,
• the musicologist Don Michael Randel,
• Stewart Sutherland, Houndwood Sutherland Baron, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and
• the cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch.

Portrait of Thomas Spencer Baynes, editor of the ninth edition. Painted in 1888, it is now in the "Senate" room of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Corporate Structure

In January 1996, the Britannica belonging to the Benton Foundation was bought by Swiss billionaire financier Jacqui Safra, who serves as the current chairman of the board. In 1997, Don Yannias, Safra's longtime associate and investment adviser, became CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. A new company, Britannica.com Inc. spun off in 1999 to develop the digital version of the Britannica; Yannias assumed the role of CEO of the new company, while Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. remained vacant for two years. Yannias' tenure at Britannica.com Inc. was marked by mistakes, many layoffs, and financial losses. In 2001, Yannias was succeeded by Ilan Yeshua, who brought together the heads of the two companies. Yannias later returned to management. but remains on the Britannica Board of Directors.

In 2003, former management consultant Jorge Cauz was appointed Chairman of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Cauz is the Chief Executive Officer and reports directly to the Britannica Board of Directors. Cauz has been seeking alliances with other companies and expanding the Britannica brand to new educational and reference products, continuing the strategy started by former CEO Elkan Harrison Powell in the 1930s.

Under Safra's ownership, the company has experienced financial difficulties, and has responded by lowering the price of its products and taking drastic cost cuts. According to a 2003 report in the New York Post, Britannica management has eliminated employee 401(k)s and encouraged free use of images. These changes have had negative effects, such as freelancers having waited up to six months for checks and britannica staff having gone years without pay increases.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. now owns trademarks to the words Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Macropædia, Micropædia and Propædia, as well as its cardo logo. It has exercised its trademark rights as recently as 2005.

Competition

As the Britannica is a general encyclopedia, it does not seek to compete with specialized encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia of Mathematics or the Dictionary of the Ages Media, which can dedicate much more space for your chosen topics. In its early years, the main competitor of the Britannica was Ephraim Chambers's general encyclopedia and, soon after, Rees's Encyclopedia and the Metropolitan Encyclopedia of Coleridge. In the 20th century, successful competitors include Collier's Encyclopedia, the Encyclopedia Americana, and the World Book Encyclopedia. However, beginning with the 9th edition, the Britannica was widely considered to have the most overall authority of any English-language encyclopedia, primarily due to its extensive coverage and eminent authors. 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 sources of information. The Internet, facilitated by the development of search engines, has become a common source of information for many people, offering easy access to reliable sources and expert opinions, thanks in part to initiatives such as Google Books, the release of the material from MIT and PubMed Central from the National Library of Medicine. In general, the Internet tends to provide more up-to-date coverage than the print media, due to the ease with which up-to-date material can be obtained on the Internet. As science, technology, politics, culture and modern history change, the Britannica has struggled to keep up, a problem first analyzed systematically by its former editor Walter Yust. Although the Britannica is available both in multimedia format and on the Internet, its supremacy is being challenged by other online encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia.

Print encyclopedias

The British Encyclopedia has been compared to print encyclopedias, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A well-known comparison is that of Kenneth Kister, who made a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the British Encyclopedia, with two comparable encyclopedias, the Collier Encyclopedia and the American Encyclopedia. For quantitative analysis, ten items were randomly selected (circumcision, Charles Drew, Galileo, Philip Glass, heart disease, intelligence, panda bear, sexual harassment, Turin Sudario and Uzbekistan) and the A, D or F letter qualifications were awarded in four categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity and novelty. In the four categories and for the three encyclopedias, the average four degrees were reduced between B- and B+, mainly because none of the encyclopedias published an article on sexual harassment in 1994. In the precision category, Britannica received a "D" and seven "A"s, the American Encyclopedia received eight "A"s, and Collier received a "D" and seven "A"s, so the Britannica received an average score of 92 % accuracy, the American 95% and Collier 92 %. La Britannica of 1994 was criticized for publishing a story about Charles Drew, which had long been discredited. In the category of timeliness, Britannica obtained an average of 86%; the American, 90%; and Collier85%. After a deeper qualitative comparison of the three encyclopedias, Kister recommends Collier Encyclopedia such as the superior encyclopedia, especially in the force of its excellent writing, balanced presentation and easy navigation.

The Collier has not been in print since 1998. The Encyclopedia Americana was last published in 2006. The Britannica was published for the last time in 2010.

Digital encyclopedias

The Britannica's most notable competitor among digital encyclopedias on CD / DVD-ROM was Encarta, now discontinued, a modern, multimedia encyclopedia incorporating three encyclopedias of Print: Funk & Wagnalls, Collier, and the New Merit Scholar. Encarta was the best-selling of the multimedia encyclopedias, based on total US sales from January 2000 to February 2006. Both occupied the same price range, with the 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate CD or DVD is $50 and the Microsoft Encarta Premium 2007 DVD is $45. The Encyclopedia Britannica contains 100,000 articles and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Synonyms (US only), offering elementary and high school editions. Encarta contains 62,000 articles, an easy-to-use visual browser, interactive mapping tools, math, language, and homework assignments. schools, a US-UK dictionary, and a youth edition. Like Encarta, the Encyclopedia Britannica has been criticized for its bias towards the United States; in the United Kingdom articles are updated less frequently, maps of the United States are more detailed than those of other countries, and it lacks a UK dictionary. Like the Encyclopedia Britannica, Encarta was available online by subscription, although some content could be accessed for free.

Internet encyclopedias

Among online alternatives to the Britannica is Wikipedia, a free-content web encyclopedia. A key difference between the two encyclopedias is in the authorship of the articles. The 699 Macropædia articles are generally written by contributors who are identified, and the nearly 65,000 Micropædia articles are the work of the editorial staff and external consultants who are also identified. Therefore, a Britannica article either has a known authorship, or a set of possible authors (the editorial team). With the exception of writing, most of the contributors to the Encyclopedia Britannica are experts in their field (some are Nobel laureates). By contrast, Wikipedia articles are written by a community of editors with varying levels of expertise. expertise: most editors do not claim any particular expertise, of those that do, many are anonymous and have no verifiable credentials. Another difference is the rate of article change: the Encyclopedia Britannica published in print is updated every few years, while Wikipedia articles are likely to be updated frequently. Robert McHenry, editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, said that Wikipedia cannot hope to compete with it for accuracy.

On December 14, 2005, in a study, the journal Nature handpicked articles from both places on a wide range of topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" science experts. matter for review. The experts compare the articles — one from each site on a certain topic — side by side, but they didn't say which article came from which site. Nature returned 42 helpful comments from its field of experts.

In the end, the magazine found only eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of them, four came from each site. They, however, discovered a number of factual errors, omissions, or misleading statements. In total, Wikipedia had 162 issues, while Britannica had 123.

The average is 2.92 errors per Britannica article and 3.86 on Wikipedia. In its detailed 20-page rebuttal, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. characterizes the study published in the journal Nature as flawed and misleading and asked for an "prompt" retraction. He noted that two of the articles in the study were taken from a Britannica yearbook, not the encyclopedia, and two others were from the Compton Encyclopedia (called the i>Britannica Student Encyclopedia on the company's website). The reply went so far as to mention that some of the articles presented to the respondents were combinations of several articles, and other articles that were nothing more than fragments, but were penalized for omission of facts. The company also noted that several facts classified as errors in Nature were minor spelling variations, and that several of its alleged errors were a matter of interpretation. Nature defended its story and refused to retract it, stating that, as Wikipedia is compared to the Britannica web version, it uses whatever relevant material is available on the Encyclopedia Britannica website.

In an interview in February 2009, the managing director of Britannica said:

Wikipedia is a fun site to use and has a lot of interesting entries there, but your approach would not work for the British Encyclopedia. My job is to raise public awareness about the differences in our approaches in publishing. They are a cylinder, we are a drill, and it is necessary to have the right tool for every job.

Graham Charlton

History of edits

British in Lusophone and Spanish-speaking countries

La Barsa, founded in Brazil in 1949, today belongs to the Spanish group Planeta. Although its content originates from the original parent company, the brand ended up acquiring its own identity, to the point of becoming the most important Lusophone encyclopedia. It was published in the country under the auspices of the Encyclopaedia Britannica of Brazil Publicações Ltda. In the 1970s, under the direction of the Immortal of the ABL, Antonio Houaiss, the Encyclopedia Mirador Internacional was launched.

Barsa Products

Some products had a short existence due to technological evolution, as was the case of the Videopedia. Among Barsa's main products are:

• Universal Barsa Encyclopedia; composed of 18 volumes, ten CD-ROMs, a DVD and Barsa Saber.
• Barsa Thematic Encyclopedia; consisting of nine volumes and two CDs.
• Barsa Hoobs; dedicated to children's audience, with 12 volumes and 12 DVDs.

The Universal Barça

Composed of three different media, the encyclopedia has weekly updates over the Internet, through its site. It has an "Academic Council" of which fourteen universities are part.

It has more than 122,000 entries, of which 500 are developed to concentrate thematic information, illustrated with more than 10,000 photographs, 900 drawings, 500 maps and 300 tables.

Other products

• Barsa Thematic Encyclopedia (9 volumes, 2 CDs); addressed to basic and middle-level students.
• Values for Life (12 volumes); work that seeks to transmit information and ethical values.
• Linguaphone; language course.
• Set Multimedia Barsa of the Portuguese Language; divided into four printed volumes, content 51,731 entries, as well as synonym and antonym inputs.

Barsa Society

The Barsa Society has several releases in various media. They are products such as Law books, Multimedia Encyclopedia of the Human Body (on 6 CD-ROMs), translators, etc.

Other countries

La Barsa is present in several Spanish-speaking countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Spain, Mexico and Venezuela and also in Portugal.