Reviewed by Péter Jacsó
Department of Information and Computer Sciences
University of Hawaii

Britannica in print

The printed Encyclopaedia Britannica has been considered the most authoritative and most comprehensive encyclopedia by many librarians and library patrons for good reasons. The immensely informative content, and the excellent illustrations satisfy the most demanding patrons. Its 37 volumes exude authority, delight many patrons and intimidate as many others. Britannica Online opens up the content beautifully and takes away most of the intimidating factors.

Micropaedia (Ready Reference) packs 72,000 articles in 12 volumes. Macropaedia (Knowledge in Depth) discusses exhaustively more than 700 topics in 17 volumes. The single volume Propaedia provides an outline of knowledge in ten divisions. In addition, a volume of Britannica Yearbook is published every year to update this vast amount of information. Five yearbooks for 1994-1998 have appeared since the issue of the last major revision (15th edition) in 1993, featuring thousands of articles, biographies, obituaries and statistical data - well over 41 million words in total at the end of 1998.

Locating articles in the print volumes

The richness of the alphabetically arranged entries in the encyclopedia can be explored only through the Index that itself requires two volumes for the 700,000 references that provide pointers to the appropriate parts , volume, page and column numbers of articles, maps, statistical data, and figures. To make it easier to locate the appropriate passage the references even indicate if the index term appears in the upper or lower part of the first or second column of a page. For example, the index entry immortality (philos. and rel.) 6:268:2a informs the reader that an article with this title can be found in the upper right hand quadrate of page 268 in volume 6, that is in the Micropedia.

Considering the amount of information this elaborate indexing by subject experts is essential, but still does not make Encyclopaedia Britannica a quick-fix source. Entries that are referenced in the Index tomes may be scattered in dozens of volumes. In addition, the Index refers the reader only to articles that substantially discuss the topic. For example, the term sovereignty in the Index provides references to volumes 2, 3, 5, 9,11,16,18,19, 21, 25, 27, 28 and to Sections 541 and 544 in Propaedia. for related terms. The term sovereignty occurs 1,281 times in the entire encyclopedia in 992 articles that span international law, political science, sociology and religion.

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Latest: 98.2
Reviewed: 98.2

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