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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Encyclopedia (disambiguation).

Entry for the French

word amour ('love') in a paper encyclopedia (Larousse Universel) and in an

online encyclopedia (wikimini.org) Title page

of Lucubrationes, 1541 edition, one of the first books to use a variant of the
word encyclopedia in the title
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopaedia (British English)
[1]
is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge,
either general or special, in a particular field or discipline.[2][3] Encyclopedias
are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article
name[4] or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable.
[5]
Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in
most dictionaries.[4][6] Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus
on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title;
[6]
this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information
about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use,
and grammatical forms.[6][7][8][9][10]

Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years and have evolved
considerably during that time as regards language (written in a major
international or a vernacular language), size (few or many volumes), intent
(presentation of a global or a limited range of knowledge), cultural
perspective (authoritative, ideological, didactic, utilitarian), authorship
(qualifications, style), readership (education level, background, interests,
capabilities), and the technologies available for their production and
distribution (hand-written manuscripts, small or large print runs, Internet).
As a valued source of reliable information compiled by experts, printed
versions found a prominent place in libraries, schools and other educational
institutions.

The appearance of digital and open-source versions in the 21st century,

such as Wikipedia (combining with the wiki website format), has vastly
expanded the accessibility, authorship, readership, and variety of
encyclopedia entries.[11]

Etymology
Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the
globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those
who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to
the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same
time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a
service to the human race in the future years to come.
Diderot[12]

The word encyclopedia (encyclo|pedia) comes from the Koine

Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία,[13] transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning
'general education' from enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning 'circular, recurrent,
required regularly, general'[6][14] and paideia (παιδεία), meaning 'education,
rearing of a child'; together, the phrase literally translates as 'complete
instruction' or 'complete knowledge'.[15] However, the two separate words
were reduced to a single word due to a scribal error[16] by copyists of
a Latin manuscript edition of Quintillian in 1470.[17] The copyists took this
phrase to be a single Greek word, enkyklopaedia, with the same meaning,
and this spurious Greek word became the Neo-Latin word encyclopaedia,
which in turn came into English. Because of this compounded word,
fifteenth-century readers since have often, and incorrectly, thought that the
Roman authors Quintillian and Pliny described an ancient genre.[18]

Characteristics
This section possibly contains original
research. Please improve it by verifying the claims
made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting
only of original research should be removed. (April
2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
The modern encyclopedia evolved from the dictionary in the 18th century;
this lineage can be seen in the alphabetical order of print encyclopedias.
[19]
Historically, both encyclopedias and dictionaries have been compiled by
well-educated, well-informed content experts, but they are significantly
different in structure. A dictionary is a linguistic work that primarily focuses
on an alphabetical listing of words and their definitions. Synonymous words
and those related by the subject matter are to be found scattered around
the dictionary, giving no obvious place for in-depth treatment. Thus, a
dictionary typically provides limited information, analysis or background for
the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave the reader
lacking in understanding the meaning, significance or limitations of a term,
and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge.

To address those needs, an encyclopedia article is typically not limited to

simple definitions, and is not limited to defining an individual word, but
provides a more extensive meaning for a subject or discipline. In addition to
defining and listing synonymous terms for the topic, the article can treat the
topic's more extensive meaning in more depth and convey the most
relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject. An encyclopedia article
also often includes many maps and illustrations, as well
as bibliography and statistics.[6] An encyclopedia is, theoretically, not written
to convince, although one of its goals is indeed to convince its reader of its
veracity.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has said that the goal of an
encyclopedia should be to provide "the sum of all human knowledge, but
sum meaning summary."[20]

In addition, sometimes books or reading lists are compiled from a

compendium of articles (either wholly or partially taken) from a specific
encyclopedia.
Four major elements
Four major elements define an encyclopedia: its subject matter, its scope,
its method of organization, and its method of production:

1. Encyclopedias can be general, containing articles on topics in every

field (the English-language Encyclopædia Britannica and
German Brockhaus are well-known examples).[3] General
encyclopedias may contain guides on how to do a variety of things,
as well as embedded dictionaries and gazetteers.[citation needed] There are
also encyclopedias that cover a wide variety of topics from a
particular cultural, ethnic, or national perspective, such as the Great
Soviet Encyclopedia or Encyclopaedia Judaica.
2. Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important
accumulated knowledge for their subject domain, such as an
encyclopedia of medicine, philosophy or law. Works vary in the
breadth of material and the depth of discussion, depending on
the target audience.
3. Some systematic methods of organization are essential to making an
encyclopedia usable for reference. There have historically been two
main methods of organizing printed encyclopedias:
the alphabetical method (consisting of several separate articles,
organized in alphabetical order) and organization
by hierarchical categories.[5] The former method is today the more
common, especially for general works. The fluidity of electronic
media, however, allows new possibilities for multiple methods of
organization of the same content. Further, electronic media offer new
capabilities for search, indexing and cross reference.
The epigraph from Horace on the title page of the 18th
century Encyclopédie suggests the importance of the structure of an
encyclopedia: "What grace may be added to commonplace matters
by the power of order and connection."
 4. As modern multimedia and the information age have evolved, new
methods have emerged for the collection, verification, summation,
and presentation of information of all kinds. Projects such
as Everything2, Encarta, h2g2, and Wikipedia are examples of new
forms of the encyclopedia as information retrieval becomes simpler.
The method of production for an encyclopedia historically has been
supported in both for-profit and non-profit contexts, such was the
case of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia mentioned above which was
entirely state-sponsored, while the Britannica was supported as a for-
profit institution.
Encyclopedic dictionaries
Some works entitled "dictionaries" are similar to encyclopedias, especially
those concerned with a particular field (such as the Dictionary of the Middle
Ages, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, and Black's Law
Dictionary). The Macquarie Dictionary, Australia's national dictionary,
became an encyclopedic dictionary after its first edition in recognition of the
use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived
from such proper nouns.
Differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries
There are some broad differences between encyclopedias and dictionaries.
Most noticeably, encyclopedia articles are longer, fuller and more thorough
than entries in most general-purpose dictionaries.[4][21] There are differences
in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries
provide linguistic information about words themselves, while encyclopedias
focus more on the things for which those words stand.[7][8][9][10] Thus, while
dictionary entries are inextricably fixed to the word described, encyclopedia
articles can be given a different entry name. As such, dictionary entries are
not fully translatable into other languages, but encyclopedia articles can be.
[7]

In practice, however, the distinction is not concrete, as there is no clear-cut

difference between factual, "encyclopedic" information and linguistic
information such as appear in dictionaries.[9][21][22] Thus encyclopedias may
contain material that is also found in dictionaries, and vice versa.[22] In
particular, dictionary entries often contain factual information about the
thing named by the word.[21][22]

Pre-modern encyclopedias
Main article: History of encyclopedias

Naturalis Historiæ, 1669 edition, title page

The earliest encyclopedic work to have survived to modern times is
the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the
1st century AD.[6][23][24][25] He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural
history, architecture, medicine, geography, geology, and all aspects of the
world around him.[25] This work became very popular in Antiquity, was one
of the first classical manuscripts to be printed in 1470, and has remained
popular ever since as a source of information on the Roman world, and
especially Roman art, Roman technology and Roman engineering.

Isidore of Seville author of Etymologiae (10th.

century Ottonian manuscript)
The Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville was the first Christian writer to try to
compile a summa of universal knowledge, the Etymologiae (c. 600–625),
also known by classicists as the Origines (abbreviated Orig.). This
encyclopedia—the first such Christian epitome—formed a huge compilation
of 448 chapters in 20 books[26] based on hundreds of classical sources,
including the Naturalis Historia. Of the Etymologiae in its time it was
said quaecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is
necessary to know".[27][24] Among the areas covered
were: grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, music, astronomy, medici
ne, law, the Catholic
Church and heretical sects, pagan philosophers, languages, cities, animals
and birds, the physical world, geography, public
buildings, roads, metals, rocks, agriculture, ships, clothes, food, and tools.

Another Christian encyclopedia was the Institutiones divinarum et

saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus (543–560) dedicated to the Christian
divinity and the seven liberal arts.[24][6] The encyclopedia of Suda, a massive
10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia, had 30,000 entries, many drawings
from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from
medieval Christian compilers. The text was arranged alphabetically with
some slight deviations from common vowel order and placed in the Greek
alphabet.[24]

The Yongle Encyclopedia[25]

From India, the Siribhoovalaya (Kannada: ಸಿರಿಭೂವಲಯ), dated between 800
A.D. to 15th century, is a work of Kannada literature written by Kumudendu
Muni, a Jain monk. It is unique because rather than employing alphabets, it
is composed entirely in Kannada numerals. Many philosophies which
existed in the Jain classics are eloquently and skillfully interpreted in the
work.

The enormous encyclopedic work in China of the Four Great Books of

Song, compiled by the 11th century during the early Song dynasty (960–
1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last
encyclopedia of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau,
amounted to 9.4 million Chinese characters in 1,000 written volumes.
The Yongle Encyclopedia (completed 1408) comprised 11,095 volumes.

There were many great encyclopedists throughout Chinese history,

including the scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031–1095) with
his Dream Pool Essays of 1088; the statesman, inventor, and
agronomist Wang Zhen (active 1290–1333) with his Nong Shu of 1313;
and Song Yingxing (1587–1666) with his Tiangong Kaiwu. Song Yingxing
was termed the "Diderot of China" by British historian Joseph Needham.[28]

Printed encyclopedias
Before the advent of the printing press, encyclopedic works were all hand-
copied and thus rarely available, beyond wealthy patrons or monastic men
of learning: they were expensive, and usually written for those extending
knowledge rather than those using it. During the Renaissance, the creation
of printing allowed a wider diffusion of encyclopedias and every scholar
could have his or her copy. The De expetendis et fugiendis
rebus by Giorgio Valla was posthumously printed in 1501 by Aldo
Manuzio in Venice. This work followed the traditional scheme of liberal arts.
However, Valla added the translation of ancient Greek works on
mathematics (firstly by Archimedes), newly discovered and translated.
The Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, printed in 1503, was a
complete encyclopedia explaining the seven liberal arts.

Financial, commercial, legal, and intellectual factors changed the size of

encyclopedias. Middle classes had more time to read and encyclopedias
helped them to learn more. Publishers wanted to increase their output so
some countries like Germany started selling books missing alphabetical
sections, to publish faster. Also, publishers could not afford all the
resources by themselves, so multiple publishers would come together with
their resources to create better encyclopedias. Later, rivalry grew, causing
copyright to occur due to weak underdeveloped laws. John Harris is often
credited with introducing the now-familiar alphabetic format in 1704 with his
English Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and
Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves –
to give its full title. Organized alphabetically, its content does indeed
contain an explanation not merely of the terms used in the arts and
sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves. Sir Isaac
Newton contributed his only published work on chemistry to the second
volume of 1710.
Encyclopédie
These paragraphs are an excerpt from Encyclopédie.[edit]
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers (French for 'Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the
Sciences, Arts and Crafts'),[29] better known
as Encyclopédie (French: [ɑ̃siklɔpedi]), was a general encyclopedia
published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements,
revised editions, and translations. It had many writers, known as
the Encyclopédistes. It was edited by Denis Diderot and, until 1759, co-
edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert.[30]

The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of

the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article "Encyclopédie",
the Encyclopédies aim was "to change the way people think" and for
people to be able to inform themselves and to know things.[31] He and the
other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from
the Jesuits.[32] Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world's knowledge
into the Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this
information to the public and future generations.[33] Thus, it is an example
of democratization of knowledge.

It was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named
contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe
the mechanical arts. In the first publication, seventeen folio volumes were
accompanied by detailed engravings. Later volumes were published
without the engravings, in order to better reach a wide audience within
Europe.[34][35]
Encyclopædia Britannica
These paragraphs are an excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica.[edit]
The Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') is a general
knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published
by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has
changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by
about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010
version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes[36] and 32,640 pages,
was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively
as an online encyclopaedia.
Printed for 244 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print
encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768
and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, in three volumes. The
encyclopaedia grew in size; the second edition was 10 volumes,[37] and by
its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes.[38] Its rising
stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th
(1875–1889) and 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for
scholarship and literary style. Starting with the 11th edition and following its
acquisition by an American firm, the Britannica shortened and simplified
articles to broaden its appeal to the North American market.

In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous

revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every
article updated on a schedule.[citation needed] In the 21st century,
the Britannica suffered first from competition with the digital multimedia
encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta,[39] and later with the online peer-
produced encyclopaedia Wikipedia.[40][41][42]

In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and

would focus instead on the online version.[41][43] Britannica has been
assessed to be politically closer to the centre of the US political spectrum
than Wikipedia.[44]

The 15th edition (1974–2010) has a three-part structure: a 12-

volume Micropædia of short articles (generally fewer than 750 words), a
17-volume Macropædia of long articles (two to 310 pages), and a
single Propædia volume to give a hierarchical outline of knowledge.
The Micropædia was meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to
the Macropædia; readers are advised to study the Propædia outline to
understand a subject's context and to find more detailed articles. Over 70
years, the size of the Britannica has remained steady, with about 40 million
words on half a million topics.[citation needed] Though published in the United
States since 1901, the Britannica has for the most part maintained British
English spelling.
Brockhaus Enzyklopädie
These paragraphs are an excerpt from Brockhaus Enzyklopädie.[edit]
The Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (German for Brockhaus Encyclopedia) is
a German-language encyclopedia which until 2009 was published by the F.
A. Brockhaus printing house.
The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon published by
Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Franke in Leipzig 1796–1808. Renamed Der
Große Brockhaus in 1928 and Brockhaus Enzyklopädie from 1966, the
current 21st thirty-volume edition contains about 300,000 entries on about
24,000 pages, with about 40,000 maps, graphics and tables. It is the
largest German-language printed encyclopedia in the 21st century.

In February 2008, F. A. Brockhaus announced the changeover to an online

encyclopedia and the discontinuation of the printed editions. The rights to
the Brockhaus trademark were purchased by Arvato services, a subsidiary
of the Bertelsmann media group. After more than 200 years, the distribution
of the Brockhaus encyclopedia ceased completely in 2014.
Encyclopedias in the United States
In the United States, the 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of several
large popular encyclopedias, often sold on installment plans. The best
known of these were World Book and Funk and Wagnalls. As many as
90% were sold door to door.[23] Jack Lynch says in his book You Could Look
It Up that encyclopedia salespeople were so common that they became the
butt of jokes. He describes their sales pitch saying, "They were selling not
books but a lifestyle, a future, a promise of social mobility." A 1961 World
Book ad said, "You are holding your family's future in your hands right
now," while showing a feminine hand holding an order form.[45] As of the
1990s, two of the most prominent encyclopedias published in the United
States were Collier's Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Americana.[46]

Digital encyclopedias
Physical media
By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-
ROMs for use with personal computers. This was the usual way computer
users accessed encyclopedic knowledge from the 1980s and 1990s.
Later, DVD discs replaced CD-ROMs, and by the mid-2000s, internet
encyclopedias were dominant and replaced disc-based software
encyclopedias.[6]

CD-ROM encyclopedias were usually a macOS or Microsoft Windows (3.0,

3.1 or 95/98) application on a CD-ROM disc. The user would execute the
encyclopedia's software program to see a menu that allowed them to start
browsing the encyclopedia's articles, and most encyclopedias also
supported a way to search the contents of the encyclopedia. The article
text was usually hyperlinked and also included photographs, audio clips (for
example in articles about historical speeches or musical instruments),
and video clips. In the CD-ROM age, the video clips had usually a low
resolution, often 160x120 or 320x240 pixels. Such encyclopedias which
made use of photos, audio and video were also called multimedia
encyclopedias.

Microsoft's Encarta, launched in 1993, was a landmark example as it had

no printed equivalent. Articles were supplemented with video and audio
files as well as numerous high-quality images. After sixteen years,
Microsoft discontinued the Encarta line of products in 2009.[47] Other
examples of CD-ROM encyclopedia are Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia
and Britannica.

Digital encyclopedias enable "Encyclopedia Services" (such as Wikimedia

Enterprise) to facilitate programmatic access to the content.[48]
Online
This section is an excerpt from Online encyclopedia.[edit]
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital
encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Examples
include Encyclopedia.com since 1998, Encarta from 2000 to
2009, Wikipedia since 2001, and Encyclopædia Britannica since 2016
Free encyclopedias
"Free encyclopedia" redirects here. For the website that uses the term as
its motto, see Wikipedia.

List of other free encyclopedias, from

Enciclopedia Libre.
The concept of a free encyclopedia began with the Interpedia proposal
on Usenet in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based online encyclopedia to
which anyone could submit content that would be freely accessible. Early
projects in this vein included Everything2 and Open Site. In 1999, Richard
Stallman proposed the GNUPedia, an online encyclopedia which, similar to
the GNU operating system, would be a "generic" resource. The concept
was very similar to Interpedia, but more in line with
Stallman's GNU philosophy.

It was not until Nupedia and later Wikipedia that a stable free encyclopedia
project was able to be established on the Internet.

The English Wikipedia, which was started in 2001, became the world's
largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage.[49] By late 2005,
Wikipedia had produced over two million articles in more than 80
languages with content licensed under the copyleft GNU Free
Documentation License. As of August 2009, Wikipedia had over 3 million
articles in English and well over 10 million combined articles in over 250
languages. Today, Wikipedia has 6,864,066 articles in English, over 60
million combined articles in over 300 languages, and over 250 million
combined pages including project and discussion pages.[50]

Since 2002, other free encyclopedias appeared, including Hudong (2005–)

and Baidu Baike (2006–) in Chinese, and Google's Knol (2008–2012) in
English. Some MediaWiki-based encyclopedias have appeared, usually
under a license compatible with Wikipedia, including Enciclopedia
Libre (2002–2021) in Spanish
and Conservapedia (2006–), Scholarpedia (2006–),
and Citizendium (2007–) in English, the latter of which had become inactive
by 2014.[51]