1-5 Encyclopedia Facts

1. Codex Seraphinianus is an illustrated encyclopedia of an unknown, parallel world, written in an unknown language using an unknown alphabet. 

2. An encyclopedia company gave away large areas of wastelands on Huntington Beach to customers who bought their books. It was found later that those lands had large oil reserves.

3. There are certain fake entries made in encyclopedias to check whether other publishers or companies are copying from their publications. These are known as Mountweazels.

4 The Chinese Yongle encyclopedia, completed in 1408, was the largest encyclopedia ever created until Wikipedia finally surpassed it in 2007.

5. Before WW2, Chamberlain complained to Goering over the use of concentration camps, after which Goering showed him an encyclopedia stating the concentration camp had been invented by England.

6-10 Encyclopedia Facts

6. Pliny’s encyclopedia of natural history talks about dog-headed men and monopods with umbrella feet. They are even illustrated in the book.

7. Wikipedia is “close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopedia Britannica”, with a similar rate of “serious errors”.

8. The encyclopedia of wars states that out of the total number of wars, 7% of them took place due to religious conflicts.

9. There was an image driven encyclopedia made from user-submitted photos that was like a visual version of Wikipedia.

10. Saint Isidore of Seville created one of the first Encyclopedias, and was one of the “last scholars of the ancient world”. Also, he’s the patron Saint of the Internet and computers.

11-15 Encyclopedia Facts

11. Conservapedia, a right winged Christian Influenced encyclopedia was created when they thought that Wikipedia was left wing biased.

12. The 1917 Edition of the Catholic encyclopedia asked people to eat less meat as it somehow caused diseases like cancer.

13. There is an online version of the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica.

14. The only encyclopedia, which still has a new edition coming up every year, is The World Book.

15. There actually exists a man who read the entire encyclopedia and wrote a book about it.

16-20 Encyclopedia Facts

16. The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

17. There is an Encyclopedia of Lubricants and Lubrication, which has 4 volumes.

18. Wikipedia, if printed on paper, would be the same size as 1900+ volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica.

19. There is a Star Wars Encyclopedia called “Wookieepedia”.

20. Encyclopedia Dramatica, the satirical Wikipedia-style encyclopedia of internet topics, has been replaced with a neutered site called “Oh Internet”.

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What is Encyclopedia?

Encyclopedia is a book or a set of books that offer information about a number of subjects. This can also be information about different aspects of the same subject as well. All these information is arranged in the alphabetical order. When it comes to the encyclopedias of the world, the one people have heard the most is Britannica. The encyclopedia Britannica, though it was compiled in 1911, is still regarded as final, authoritative, and unmatched in terms of knowledge that it imparts. Many of us who have been privy to Encyclopedia Britannica remember the reverence in which it was held and how much importance, even teachers have attached to the information contained in it.

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is a nonprofit organization that is totally dependent upon contributions from readers as they are the creators of all that is there on the website. All information inside Wikipedia is for everyone, and people have the liberty to edit and put updated information on any webpage of the site. This is enough to put doubts in the minds of readers as to the extent up to which they can rely on such information. But, Wikipedia tries to put to rest all such doubts by saying that there are editors that verify the information submitted and thus, the information is not wrong at all.

However, there is no denying of the facts that, in today’s world, where internet is the best medium for dissemination of knowledge, to even think of encyclopedias getting the kind of readership that Wikipedia is enjoying (2.5 billion page views per month) is ridiculous. Also, the fact that Wikipedia is growing by the minute and today contains more than 4, 733, 235 articles (2015) in English Wikipedia is astounding. Also, these articles contain much more than what Britannica has to offer to the readers. It is also a fact that Wikipedia is the easiest of the sources to look up for information on anything under the sun rather than trying to find that information in any other encyclopedia.

What is the difference between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia?

• Wikipedia is a sea of information that is being contributed by readers present in all parts of the world, and the content on the site is growing by the minute.

• Encyclopedias are literary works that are definitive and authoritative, which cannot be said about Wikipedia. Especially, in the academic world, though encyclopedias are accepted as sources, Wikipedia is not accepted as a reliable source.

• Wikipedia is easily available to all, and anyone can edit and update the information, which is not possible in the case of encyclopedias.

• Though Britannica is trying hard to fight a battle of readership with an online version and even CD’s and DVD’s of Britannica being available apart from the regular hard copy, it is a foregone conclusion that Wikipedia is going to emerge victorious.

• Wikipedia is free. That means, if you have an internet connection, you do not have to pay to use Wikipedia. However, you have to pay to use an encyclopedia. To use one, you have to buy one. Even if you use a library book, the library has already paid to purchase the book. Also, online versions too charge money for subscriptions.

• Wikipedia is found only as an internet encyclopedia while other encyclopedias are available as hard copies and internet sources.

The post Where to look for information: Wikipedia or Encyclopedia? appeared first on World Enceclopedia.

There was also a series of editions of the much smaller Malaya sovetskaya entsiklopedya (“The Little Soviet Encyclopaedia”), first issued in 1928–31.

In the United States, the first edition of The New International Encyclopaedia was issued in 1902–04 and was subsequently supplemented by yearbooks. The Encyclopedia Americana, which traced its ancestry to an English-language adaptation (1829–33) of the seventh edition of Brockhaus, took on new strength in 1902 when the editor of Scientific American, Frederick C. Beach, was appointed editor of the Americana. It has enjoyed growing success through its policy of following the continuous revision system, and yearbooks have supplemented it from 1923 onward. In 1950–51 a completely new American work, Collier’s Encyclopedia, appeared in 20 volumes, and subsequent editions have been supplemented by yearbooks since 1960. Collier’s was noted for its large number of illustrations and maps.

The “Espasa,” the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana (1905–33), like the Enciclopedia italiana, eschewed revision in favour of a series of sizable supplements. One complete volume was devoted to Spain and was separately revised and reissued from time to time. A smaller encyclopaedia, the Salvat universal diccionario enciclopédico (first issued in 1907–13), was revised at frequent intervals. Another major Spanish encyclopaedia, the Enciclopedia labor (first issued 1955–60), devoted one volume each to major subject areas, and an index volume provided the key to the total contents. This encyclopaedia was notable for the attention it paid to every Spanish-speaking part of the world.

One of the most important of all encyclopaedias, the Enciclopedia italiana di scienze, lettere, ed arti (1929–39), was famous for its lavish production, its superb illustrations, and its lengthy, scholarly, and well-documented articles. Even its defense of Fascist ideology was not allowed to impinge on the general impartiality of the text. Supplements were issued after World War II. The postwar Dizionario enciclopedico italiano (1955–61), issued by the same publishers, was a much smaller, well-illustrated work. The Enciclopedia europea was released in Milan between 1976 and 1984. Although consisting largely of brief articles, it had numerous signed long articles of good quality. In Germany the three giants of the German encyclopaedia world—Brockhaus, “Meyer,” “Herder”—continued to produce new editions in the 20th century.

In spite of the continuing popularity of Larousse, France produced three other encyclopaedias of note in the 20th century. The Encyclopédie française (begun 1935) was an outstanding collection of monographs by well-known scholars and specialists, arranged in classified form and available in loose-leaf binders, supplemented by a continuously revised index. Its 21 volumes, each under the direction of a different authority, dealt with (1) human mental tools (logical thought, language, and mathematics); (2) physics; (3) heaven and earth; (4) life; (5) living beings; (6) human beings (the normal and the sick); (7) the human species; (8) the study of the mind; (9) the economic and social universe; (10) the modern state; (11) international life; (12) chemical science and industry; (13) industry and agriculture; (14) daily life; (15) education and learning theory; (16–17) arts and literatures; (18) the written word; (19) philosophy and religion; and (20) the world in its development (history, evolution, prospective); the 21st volume contained an index. The articles were notable for their almost total concentration on contemporary issues in the fields considered.

The Encyclopédie de la Pléiade (begun 1955) was an encyclopaedic series, each work (some in more than one volume) being a self-contained treatment of a broad subject field written in narrative form.

One of the most interesting new encyclopaedias was the Encyclopaedia Universalis (first issued 1968–74), edited by Claude Grégory and owned by the French Book Club and Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (since 2005 solely by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.). This work, inspired by L’Encyclopédie, eschewed the inclusion of minor items in favour of extensive and very well-illustrated articles on important subjects, and it paid special attention to modern science and technology. It was accompanied by a symposium and an elaborate thesaurus-index.

Encyclopaedia Universalis was doubly notable as the product of a contemporary publishing phenomenon known in the industry as “coproduction.” The term is applied in general to the collaborative efforts of publishing concerns in two or more countries that have combined forces to produce an encyclopaedia for sale in one of the countries or, with modifications to the volumes, in two or several countries. Successful examples of coproduction in the 20th century include the Buritanika Kokusai Dai Hyakka Jiten (Britannica International Encyclopædia) in Japan and the Concise Encyclopædia Britannica in China (both discussed below). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., in addition, was similarly involved in the development of the Taiwan edition of the Concise Encyclopædia Britannica in traditional Chinese characters (1989); the Korean Britannica World Encyclopædia; the Turkish AnaBritannica; two Spanish-language encyclopaedias, the Enciclopedia Barsa de consulta fácil and the Enciclopedia hispánica; the Portuguese-language Enciclopédia Barsa and Enciclopédia Mirador Internacional, a scholarly set first published in Brazil in 1975; Il Modulo, published in Italy; Britannica Hungarica Világenciklopédia (2002), published in Budapest; and Britannica Edycja Polska (1997–2005), published in Poznań, Pol. Coproduction was taken worldwide with localized editions of the one-volume Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, first published in English in 2002, based on Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia (2000), itself a coproduction between Britannica and Merriam-Webster, Inc. Within a decade, versions of Britannica Concise augmented with local content were planned in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Macedonian, Malayalam, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Other major instances of coproduction involved The New Caxton Encyclopedia, which originated in Italy with Istituto Geografico de Agostini and subsequently appeared in Great Britain, first sold in serial parts as Purnell’s New English Encyclopedia (1966) and then in a bound set of 18 volumes (1966); in France there appeared a version called Alpha: La Grande Encyclopédie Universelle en Couleurs, and in Spain a version called Monitor. The American-made The Random House Encyclopedia was adapted and translated in various languages and under various names for distribution in several countries.

By the 21st century virtually every Western country had domestically produced or released either a single-volume or a multivolume encyclopaedia in its native tongue. Many encyclopaedias were available additionally, and some solely, in CD-ROM, DVD, and online formats.

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