Encyclopædia Britannica Totally Explained

Everything about Encyclopedia Britannica totally explained

The Encyclopædia Britannica 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 19 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. It is widely perceived as the most scholarly of encyclopaedias. 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 over 21 volumes. 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. 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. 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. Although several other encyclopaedias competed with the Britannica, such as Rees's Cyclopaedia and Coleridge's Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, these competitors either went bankrupt or were left unfinished due to disagreements among their editors. By the close of this era, the Britannica had developed a network of illustrious contributors, primarily through personal friendships with the editors, most notably Constable and Gleig.

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. 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. 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, 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's 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. Writer George Bernard Shaw claimed to have read the complete 9th edition—except for the science articles 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.

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 Britannica doesn't 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 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 encyclopedia was provoked to produce the 15th edition, which required 10 years of work.

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 doesn't 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. 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. 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 wasn't historically accurate (1875). 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's mentioned briefly under the biography of her husband Pierre Curie.

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's proceeded in an unscientific spirit and given so little objective justification of his criticism."
   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've never made such a claim." 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. 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. 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're 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 abbreviated 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 adolescents ages 10–17 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 ages 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 specialized reference works, such as Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard (Wiley, 2006).

Optical disc and online and mobile versions

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. 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're 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.

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 (1902–1938), 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), Anita Wolff and Theodore Pappas serve as the current Deputy Editor and Executive Editor, respectively.

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(k) 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 doesn't 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, 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. Both occupy 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. Like the Britannica, Encarta is 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. Wikipedia receives roughly 450 times more traffic than the online version of the Britannica, based on independent page-view statistics gathered by Alexa in the first three months of 2007.
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. 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 it has been argued that Wikipedia can't 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 penalized 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.

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 pounds 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	Summarized 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
15th	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 2002.

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