Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

A Solution to the Problem ofUpdating Encyclopedias∗
Eric M. Hammer and Edward N. Zalta†
Center for the Study of Language and Information
Stanford University(ehammer,zalta)@csli.stanford.edu

2problem, namely, a ‘dynamic’ encyclopedia that is published on the Internet.4 Unlike static encyclopedias (i.e., encyclopedias that will become
fixed in print or on CD-ROM), the dynamic encyclopedia allows entries
to be improved and refined, thereby becoming responsive to new research
and advances in the field. Though there are Internet encyclopedias which
are being updated on a regular basis, typically none of these projects
gives the authors direct access to the material being published. However,
we have developed a dynamic encyclopedia which gives the authors direct access to their entries and the means to update them whenever it isneeded, and which does so without sacrificing the quality of the entries.
In the effort to produce a dynamic encyclopedia of high quality, we discovered that numerous problems had to be solved and that routine editorial
and administrational functions could be automated. By reporting on our
project, we hope to facilitate the creation of such reference works in otherfields.

Abstract
This paper describes a way of creating and maintaining a ‘dynamic encyclopedia’, i.e., an encyclopedia whose entries can be
improved and updated on a continual basis without requiring the
production of an entire new edition. Such an encyclopedia is therefore responsive to new developments and new research. We discuss
our implementation of a dynamic encyclopedia and the problems
that we had to solve along the way. We also discuss ways of automating the administration of the encyclopedia.

The greatest problem with encyclopedias is that they tend to go outof date. Various solutions to this problem have been tried. One is to produce new editions in rapid succession.1 Another is to publish supplements
or yearbooks on a regular basis.2 Another is to publish the encyclopedia in loose-leaf format.3 In this paper, we propose a solution to this∗ This paper was published in Computers and the Humanities, 31/1 (1997): 47–60.
† The authors would like to thank David Barker-Plummer, Mark Greaves, Andrew
Irvine, Emma Pease, Susanne Riehemann, and Nathan Tawil for critical suggestions
which often led to improvements in the Encyclopedia’s design. We would also like tothank the anonymous referees for their suggestions on how to improve the paper.
1 For example, Louis Moréri tried this solution with his Grand Dictionnaire Historique of 1674, as did Arnold Brockhaus, in his Konversations-Lexikon, 1796–1811.
2 So, for example, there were 11 supplementary volumes to the ninth Edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannica (1875–1889). These constituted the ‘tenth edition’.
3 For example, the second edition of Nelson’s Perpetual Loose Leaf Encyclopaediaof 1920. The Encyclopédie française is still available in loose-leaf format.

1

Basic Description of Dynamic Encyclopedias
We have recently developed the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/). The principal innovative feature ofthis dynamic encyclopedia is that authors have an ftp (‘file transfer protocol’) account on the multi-user computer that runs the encyclopedia’s
World Wide Web server. This feature not only enables the encyclopedia
to become functional quickly, but also gives the authors of the entries theability to revise, expand, and update their entries whenever needed.
Traditionally, encyclopedias have not been very responsive to new research and developments in the field—it is just too expensive to publish
regularly new editions in a fixed medium such as print and CD-ROM.
However, a dynamic encyclopedia simply evolves and quickly adapts toreflect advances in research. We believe that the process of updating
individual entries never ceases, and that any encyclopedia which takes
account of this fact will necessarily be more useful in the long run thanthose which don’t.
Authors who have a strong interest in and commitment to the topics
on which they write will be motivated to keep their entries abreast of the
4 We conceived of this solution in our effort to implement John Perry’s suggestionthat the Center for the Study of Language and Information develop an Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.

3

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

latest advances in research. Indeed, dynamic encyclopedias may speed up
the dissemination of new ideas. Of course, there may come a time when
an author wants to transfer responsibility for maintaining the entry tosomeone else. In such cases, there is the possibility of having multiple
entries on a single topic, and this is one of the new possibilities that canbe explored in a dynamic encyclopedia.
Here is how we implemented our dynamic encyclopedia. We connecteda multi-user (UNIX) workstation to the Internet and installed a World
Wide Web server. We then created a cover page, a table of contents, an
editorial page, and a directory in webspace entitled entries. We recruited
Editorial Board members for the job of identifying topics, soliciting authors, and reviewing the the entries and updates when they are received.
Once an Editorial Board member decides on a topic and has found an
author to write it, he or she passes on the information to the Editor of
the encyclopedia, who creates an ftp account and home directory for theauthor on the workstation and then sends the author the information on
how to ftp the entries and updates when they are ready. So when authors ftp an entry or an update to their home directory, it becomes partof the encyclopedia5 and the Board member responsible for that entry is
automatically notified. It is then his or her responsibility to evaluate the(modified) entry and inform the author of any changes that should be
made.
The innovative features of a dynamic encyclopedia that has been organized on the above plan are:1. It can be expanded indefinitely; there is no limit to its inclusiveness or size. New or previously unrecognized topics within a given
discipline can be included as they are discovered or judged to beimportant.
2. It eliminates the lag time between the writing and publication of
the entries.
3. It eliminates many of the expenses of producing a printed document
or CD-ROM: typesetting, copy-editing, printing, and distribution
expenses are no longer necessary.
5 The way we have set things up, each entry is given its own subdirectory in theentries directory, and that subdirectory is then linked into the author’s home directory.
So any files that the author transfers into that subdirectory can be accessed over theWorld Wide Web.

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

4

4. It can change in response to new technology as the latter develops,
such as new tools, languages, and techniques.
In addition, statistics software can process the information in the accesslog of the encyclopedia web server and identify which sites users access
it from, which entries they access most, which topics they search for, etc.
Such information can help inform decisions about which additional entries
to solicit, which authors to recruit to write them, etc.
An important motivating feature of using the Internet as a medium
is that the encyclopedia can reach a wider audience than is possible withtraditional academic journals and books. Because of this, we are recruiting authors capable of writing articles that are of interest not only to
specialists.

Computer Supported Collaborative Work
Encyclopedias are, in some sense, a collaborative effort. It seems natural,
therefore, to analyze the task of building a dynamic encyclopedia in termsof ‘computer supported collaborative work’ (cscw).6 For example, sinceboth the Editor and the author will have write access to an entry, the placeon the disk where the entry is stored constitutes a ‘group workspace’.7
Thus version control may seem necessary to prevent simultaneous editingby different ‘group members’.
Version control could prove useful on those rare occasions when the
Editor, as opposed to the author, changes an entry to repair a typographically error or fix some problematic HTML code. Although the Editor
will typically leave such tasks to the authors, there may be times whenquick action by the Editor is necessary. On such occasions, authors andEditor could find themselves in the situation of attempting to modify theentry simultaneously. However, to avoid such conflicts, we instruct our
authors to follow a protocol for revising their work, namely, to begin bothby notifying the Editor of their intentions and by downloading the current version of their entry from the Encyclopedia. Such a procedure will
prevent author and editor from overwriting each others modifications.8
6 See Baecker [1993], Baecker et al [1995], Greenberg [1991], and Greif [1988].
7 Only the principal author of coauthored entries will have ftp access to an entry.
8 To be absolutely safe, the Editor can always invoke superuser priveleges and prevent the author from further altering the file until the editing process is complete anda local backup is made.

5

6

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

Coauthored entries will obviously be highly collaborative, but these
constitute only a very small percentage of the entries. If we ignore coauthored entries, it is striking that some of the distinguishing features ofcscw are absent. For example, no member of the group of authors requires information on the current status of the work being done by othergroup members.9 Moreover, no member of the group of authors requires
information about the history of other authors’ collaborative activities.
Nor do members of the group of authors require information about theprocess of collaboration (e.g., the roles and responsibilities of other members, and which group members fit into which roles).
These features of cscw, however, do apply to the Editor, who requires
information on the current status of the work by the authors, on aspects of
the history of the authors’ activities, and on the process of collaboration.
In addition, members of the Board of Editors will need information about
the history of the activities of those authors writing on topics under theireditorial control; for example, a board member needs to know as soon as
such an author has updated an entry. And, finally, if the encyclopedia
project has the financial resources to maintain a large central staff, thensuch cscw concepts as conferencing, bulletin boards, structured messaging, meeting schedulers, and organizational memory could play a role inthe design of administrative procedures.
Since we are operating on a much smaller scale, these last cscw concepts will play almost no role in what follows. The cscw features that do
apply will become features of the central administrative control of the encyclopedia and can be managed by properly defined databases and updating procedures. Thus, the cscw concept most relevant to our enterprise is‘work flow management’. By analyzing the way in which the Encyclopedia
would typically function (i.e., the sequence of tasks of the parties involved
and the sequence of transactions among the parties), one can predict andaddress many of the problems that would affect the smooth operation of
the Encyclopedia. These will be discussed in the next two sections. Eventhe choice of technologies was to some extent dictated by this analysis
of work-flow. For example, we investigated SGML as a possible markup
language for the Encyclopedia entries and we created a Document TypeDefinition for a typical encyclopedia entry (thereby defining tags that theauthors would use to mark up their entries). Although SGML is superior
in many respects, several factors prompted us to choose standard HTML,
including (i) the availability of HTML editors and guides (which makes it
easy for authors to produce entries in the proper format without extensive training), and (ii) the availability of good, free HTML search engines.
Many other choices about the construction of the encyclopedia were madeon the basis of such work-flow considerations.
It should be clear from our brief description that a dynamic encyclopedia poses very interesting questions concerning work-flow management.
With adequate financial resources, a project of this type might consider
buying, adapting, and/or modifying some off-the-shelf commercial workflow management system.10 But few of the systems available seem tobe designed to solve the specific problems of the dynamic encyclopedia
concept that we wanted to implement. We therefore decided to develop
our own solution to the problems of work-flow, one tailored to our specificneeds. Having Unix and perl as resources, we have been able to address
the special problems that arise in working out the idea of a dynamic
encyclopedia.

Problems Facing Dynamic Encyclopedias
First and foremost is the problem of quality control. Whereas all encyclopedias face the problem of choosing high quality board members andauthors and the problem of editing entries, the dynamic encyclopedia has
the further problem of evaluating changes to entries because authors havethe right to access and change their entries when the occasion arises. In astatic encyclopedia, once board members and authors are chosen, there isa single further step of quality control which involves the careful editingof submitted entries, so that errors are not published in the fixed medium.
In contrast, a dynamic encyclopedia needs a systematic method of evaluating both the new entries posted to the encyclopedia and the subsequentchanges made to those entries.
Second, there are the problems involved in producing an electronic
work, such as maintaining a uniform entry style and familiarizing authors
with markup languages and electronic file transfer.
10 See,9 If an author needs information about what topics the encyclopedia will include,

this can be obtained directly by examining the Encyclopedia website or by asking the
Editor.

for example, Medina-Mora et al [1992]. It is unclear to us whether such
software as the freely-distributed Egret (http://www.ics.hawaii.edu/ csdl/egret/) or
the commercial Lotus ‘Notes’ (http://www2.lotus.com/notes.nsf) would be helpful inthis regard.

7

8

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

Third, there are the problems of automating routine editorial and administrative tasks so that the encyclopedia can be set-up and maintained
without a large staff. For example, the following processes can be automated: creating accounts for the authors, sending them email about theiraccounts and the ftp commands they might need, monitoring changes in
the content to entries, updating the table of contents, cross-referencing
entries, modifying the email aliases (such as the list of the authors’ email
addresses), notifying the board members that entries for which they are
responsible have been changed, etc.
Fourth, there are the issues of copyright. Who should own the copyright to individual entries? Who has the responsibility for obtaining permission to display photographs? What rights do the authors have overtheir entries? What rights does the encyclopedia have to republish entries
in altered form?
Fifth, there are the problems of maintaining the encyclopedia. How
often should authors be expected to update their entries? What happens
when an author no longer wants to be responsible for updating his or
her entry? How do we turn over an entry to a new author? Under
what conditions should the encyclopedia allow multiple entries for a single
topic?
Sixth, there are the problems of site security. How does one prevent
authors or anyone else from gaining access to other parts of the encyclopedia. What if an article is accidentally deleted or damaged?
Finally, there are the issues of citation and digital preservation. How
should people using the Encyclopedia cite the articles? What happens
if the cited material is subsequently deleted when an author updates ormodifies the entry? How will the Encyclopedia be preserved so that thematerial will always be available for scholarly research in the same waythat the citations to current and past encyclopedias are available?

dates to entries. Our solution is to monitor changes to each entry andto notify both the Editor and the editorial board member responsible
for that particular entry. When notified of a change, the Editor immediately verifies that the entry has not been accidentally or maliciously
damaged. More importantly, however, we have written a script that will
send out email notices to the relevant board member automatically, notonly when the entry is first transferred to the encyclopedia, but also when
any changes are made thereafter.11 A problem with this procedure is that
Board members will be notified even if there have been trivial modifications to entries. Though we have configured our script so that changes
that the Editor makes to an entry (to fix typographical errors, HTML
formatting errors, etc.) are not reported, we are planning to make our
script ‘smarter’, so that it reports to the Board member only significant
changes to content made by the author.12
Given that entries in the dynamic encyclopedia can be modified, theauthors can improve their entries not only in response to comments fromthe relevant Board member, but also in response to comments received
from colleagues in the field. The latter may also be aware of relevant
research not mentioned in the article. However, this introduces a controversial element, since commentators might not be satisfied by the modifications, if any, that authors make in response to their comments andmay therefore write to the Editors to make their case. So the Editors andBoard members of a dynamic encyclopedia must be prepared to moderate
between authors and such commentators.

Solutions to the Problems
Quality Control
Like other high-quality reference works, the authors of entries will be
nominated and/or approved by a carefully selected board of editors andthe entries themselves will be subject to critical evaluation. But giventhat the authors have the right to access and change their entries at will,
the dynamic encyclopedia has the special problem of how to evaluate up-

11 We have taken advantage of the UNIX ‘find’ program; it is invoked in a script(‘modifications’) that runs each night and makes note of which entries have beenchanged in the past 24 hours. The ‘find’ command is invoked with the following flags:

find entries -ctime -1 -name ’*.html’ -print
This causes ‘find’ to print a list of all the HTML files in the ‘entries’ directory thatwere altered in the last day. For each HTML file in the list, the ‘modifications’ scriptthen determines which Board member is responsible for the entry and places a timestamped line in that Board member’s log file (the log file is simply a list of entries alongwith the date they were modified and the author of the entry). On a fixed schedule,
another script (‘send-notifications’) then sends the log file to the Board member in an
email message. This notifies the Board member that he or she should evaluate themodified entries.
12 For example, we are considering ways to use the UNIX ‘diff’ command to tell us
which lines in the file are different from the most recent backup copy. The problem
with ‘diff’ is the output, which is difficult to read. But there may be a way to convert
the output into a more readable format.

9

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

As a final resort, the Editors can always remove entries should theauthors fail to respond to valid criticism, from whatever source.

Production
To solve the problems of production, we have created an annotated HTMLsourcefile of a sample entry. The authors may use this sourcefile as amodel, replacing its content with their own content.13 We created a listof HTML manuals available on the World Wide Web and linked thislist into the Editorial Information page of the Encyclopedia. For thoseauthors with HTML experience, we created a empty template sourcefile
defining the basic entry format, which they can download and simply fillin with their content. Recently, however, a wide variety of HTML-editors
have become available and we have created a special page containing links
directly to the download archives containing these editors. So the simplest
way for an author with no HTML experience to create an entry would
be for him or her to first download Netscape Navigator Gold from thearchive, download our HTML template from the Encyclopedia, load thetemplate into Navigator Gold, and then complete their entry simply by
selecting text that they have entered and using menu items provided by
Navigator Gold to format the text automatically.
Instructions which explain these options are automatically sent to theauthors when we set up their accounts. These instructions also explain
to the authors how to ftp their entry to our machine and get them into
webspace once they have created the HTML sourcefile for their entry
and tested it locally on their own computer. We have organized theauthor accounts in such a way that files transferred into the author’s
home directory immediately become a part of the encyclopedia.14
13 The annotations in the sourcefile consist of both instructions and comments. The
instructions tell the authors how to eliminate the dummy content and replace it (bycutting and pasting) with the genuine content of their entries. The comments serve toindicate what the special HTML formatting commands are doing.
14 We have things arranged so that the author of the entry ‘entryname.html’ will
ftp that entry not just to his or her home directory, but to the special subdirectoryof his or her home directory entitled ‘entryname’. This latter directory is created by
our new-author script (see below) as a subdirectory of the entries directory and thenlinked into the author’s home directory. Thus, any files the author ftp’s into thisspecial subdirectory are available to the httpd server.

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

10

Automation
We have automated many of the routine editorial tasks so that the encyclopedia can be administered without a large staff. We have written
UNIX and perl scripts to do the following: create accounts for the authors(from keyboard input by the Editors), send the authors email about theiraccount and the ftp commands they might need, take notice of newly
submitted entries, monitor changes in the content to entries, manage thecross-referencing between encyclopedia entries by linking keywords of new
entries to other entries, modify the email aliases such as ‘authors’ (whichcontains a list of the email addresses of all the authors), and notify theboard members that entries for which they are responsible have beenchanged. Here is a more detailed description of some of the scripts thathave been written:
new-author script: This script will perform the system tasks necessary
to add a new author to the encyclopedia. The script automatically sets
up an account and home directory for the author with the proper accessprivileges (i.e., ‘write’ privileges for the author and the editors only), updates the encyclopedia databases (containing information about authors
and their entries), and mails customized information to the author about
how to prepare his or her entry, access his or her account, and transfer
the new entry to the encyclopedia’s machine.
asterisks script: When an entry is assigned but not yet written, thename of the entry in the table of contents is marked with an asterisk.
The ‘asterisks’ script notices when an author has ftp’d a new entry to theencyclopedia and then removes the asterisk from the table of contents.
modifications script: This script sends email on a regular schedule to
the Editorial Board members indicating which entries have been modified
on which date. It determines which Board member is in charge of the entry
and updates that Board member’s log file with the filename, author, anddate the file was modified.
encyclopedia script: This script is a database manager. It extracts andmodifies information in the encyclopedia’s databases. Among the tasks
it performs are: (a) provide information about an author, (b) provide
information about a board member, (c) provide information about anentry, (d) list authors by last name, (e) list keywords to be used for crossreferencing completed entries, (f) add a keyword to the database, (g)remove a keyword from the database, (h) list the entry associated with a

11

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

keyword, and (i) list all keywords for a given entry.
keyword script: This script verifies and, if necessary, updates the keyword cross-referencing links between entries. When a new entry is submitted, the script verifies that keywords for which authors have included
links are linked to the correct entries. Moreover, any keyword references
to the new entry in previously existing entries are automatically linked
to the new entry by the script. The script also notifies the Editor if theauthor has included keywords for which there are no entries in the tableof contents. The Editor can then decide either to add the entry to the encyclopedia (or associate the keyword with an existing entry) or to remove
the keyword.
It should be mentioned that the selection of keywords is, in the first
instance, carried out by the members of the Board of Editors at the stage
when they identify topics for inclusion in the Encyclopedia. Since eachboard member will be chosen for his or her expertise in a philosophy
subspecialty, the selection of topics and their corresponding keywords
will be driven initially by the perspective that the board members have on
their fields. However, the authors will also determine and list the concepts
that are essential to understanding the entry they have contributed. When
there are discrepancies between the concepts listed by the author and the
topics identified by the board member, it will be the job of the Editor
to work with these individuals and find the best way to organize theEncyclopedia. These judgements cannot always be made a priori and the
keyword script identifies when such judgements have to be made.

may be reprinted, reproduced, stored, or utilized in any form,by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including printing, photocopying, saving,broadcasting or recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, other than for purposes of fair use, without
written permission from the Editors.

Copyright Protection
Authors are instructed to read the encyclopedia’s copyright notice before
transferring their entry to the encyclopedia. The transfer of their entry
constitutes an implicit acceptance of the copyright terms stated. The
notice has three parts:15
Copyright Notice. All authors and contributers to the Encyclopedia retain copyright over their work. All rights not
expressly granted to the Encyclopedia are retained by the authors. Copyright of the Encyclopedia itself is held by the University. All rights are reserved. No part of the Encyclopedia
15 We would like to thank Andrew Irvine, a Stanford Encyclopedia Board member,for his assistance in the formulation of the three parts to this Statement of Copyright.

12This part gives authors copyright over their entries. Note that to view anentry, the web browser accessing it makes a complete copy of the entry
somewhere in the user’s machine. We are assuming that such copying of
entries qualifies as fair use, and is not ruled out by this portion of the
copyright notice.
Licensing Agreement. By contributing to the Encyclopedia
authors grant to the Encyclopedia a perpetual, non-exclusive,
worldwide right to copy, distribute, transmit and publish theircontribution, as well as any and all derivative works preparedor modified by the Editors from the original contribution, in
whole or in part, by any variety of methods on all types ofpublication and broadcast media, now known or hereafter invented. Authors also grant to the Encyclopedia a perpetual,
non-exclusive, worldwide right to translate their contribution,
as well as any modified or derivative works, into any andall languages for the same purposes of copying, distributing,transmitting and publishing their work.
This part gives the Editors a license to use and modify submitted entries.
The license give the Editors the right to publish the entry on the Internet,
using whatever technology is currently available. It also gives the Editors
the right to publish portions of an entry. For example, if someone searches
the encyclopedia, a search engine will return only those portions of an
entry relevant to the search keyword(s). The Editors may also wish toinclude a portion of an entry in an advertisement for the encyclopedia
or in a description of the encyclopedia. Finally, it gives the Editors theright to modify entries, for example, to add links in the sourcefile to otherentries or change the way entries are formatted.
Statement of Liability. By contributing to the Encyclopedia
authors grant to the Encyclopedia immunity from all liability
arising from their work. All authors are responsible for securing permission to use any copyrighted material, including

13

14

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

graphics, quotations, and photographs, within their articles.
The University and the Editors of the Encyclopedia therefore
disclaim any and all responsibility for copyright violations andany other form of liability arising from the content of the Encyclopedia or from any material linked to the Encyclopedia.

anonymous ftp server.16 So only authors and the Editor can submit ormodify entries. Moreover, an author can only modify entries in his or her
own home directory.
The only way to protect against malicious and unauthorized access tothe machine is to back it up on a regular basis. This also protects theencyclopedia against machine failures. We back up our encyclopedia onto
tape and onto an external hard drive.17 This external hard drive has been
configured as a boot disk and contains all the system software necessary
to run the Encyclopedia. In case the machine that runs the Encyclopedia
experiences catastrophic failure, we can install the external hard drive
into one of our backup UNIX workstations and reboot, a process thattakes fifteen minutes.

Because authors have access to their entries, they could include copyrighted material in an entry without the Editor’s knowledge. Moreover,there is an interval between the time when an entry is modified and thetime when it is checked. This clause protects the encyclopedia and its
Editors from any problems with entries arising from these situations.
Maintenance
Dynamic encyclopedias require infrequent but regular maintenance by
the authors and Board members, and require only moderate maintenanceby the Editor. Once the Board and authors have been selected and theentries have been written, maintenance of the encyclopedia will primarily involve revisions by authors and examinations of the revisions by theboard members. The Editor will only need to handle activities that are
not automated, such as communicating with authors and the board concerning any problems that arise, troubleshooting the operation of theencyclopedia, and commissioning new entries as new concepts become
important.
We suggest that authors update their entries at least once every year.
When an author no longer wishes to maintain his or her entry, the Editors
and author have several options. One is to leave it in the encyclopedia,
indicating that no further revisions will be made. It may come to beof historical interest. The Editor will then have to commission anotherauthor to write a second entry on the same topic. A second option isto transfer maintenance of the original entry to someone else, with thedetails to be worked out between the original author and the new author.
Security
For the most part, the security problems of a dynamic encyclopedia are
the usual security problems of system administration. We have given
our authors an ‘ftp account’ on our machine rather than setting up an

Citation and Digital Preservation
We propose that citations to our Encyclopedia conform to the Modern
Languages Association style to the citation of electronic sources. The‘MLA-style’ format for citation is:18
Author’s Lastname, Author’s Firstname. ”Title of Document.” Title
of Complete Work (if applicable). Version or File Number, if applicable. Document date or date of last revision (if different fromaccess date). Protocol and address, access path or directories (dateof access).
16 To be precise, we gave each author a login account with a home directory but
made it impossible for the author to actually telnet, log on, and run processes on ourmachine. We did this by assigning a nonexistent UNIX shell ‘/bin/nosh’ as their login
shell. When an author ftp’s to the machine, the ftp daemon checks to make sure thathe or she has been assigned a login shell, but it doesn’t require that the shell be aserviceable one. Thus, authors have ftp privileges to and from their home directories,
but no login privileges, thereby reducing the load on our server and increasing security.
Furthermore, each author’s name not only serves to identify his or her home directory
but also serves to identify a UNIX ‘group’ (of users), of which only the author andthe Editor are members. The author’s home directory is assigned to this group, thus
allowing only the author and the Editor write privileges to the author’s home directory.
Even if a password is stolen, at most one entry could be damaged.
17 The tape backup is on an incremental dump schedule, with a full dump occurring
every two weeks. The daily backup onto the external drive makes a new copy of theusers’ home directories, the HTML sourcefiles of the encyclopedia entries, and thevarious programs and support data needed to run a web server.
18 See Walker, Janice. “MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources.” Version 1.1.
January, 1995 (Rev. 8/96). http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html (May12, 1997).

15

16

The Problem of Updating Encyclopedias

Eric Hammer and Edward N. Zalta

So, for example, a citation to our entry on Bertrand Russell, would look
like this:we will have adequately safeguarded the material that appears in our
Encyclopedia for scholarly research far into the future.

Irvine, Andrew. “Bertrand Russell.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. January 28, 1997.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/russell.html(October 12, 1997)

Conclusion

So that cited material does not disappear when entries are revised,
we have decided to fix a quarterly edition of the Encyclopedia and store
those editions online on a special ‘Archive Page’ of the Encyclopedia. By
checking and citing the most recent quarterly edition, one can be surethat the material being cited won’t disappear. Thus, the citation to theentry on Bertrand Russell becomes:
Irvine, Andrew. “Bertrand Russell.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 1997 Edition.
http://plato.stanford.edu/archive/fall1997/entries/russell/russell.html(October 12, 1997)
We are currently exploring whether there are any other alternatives tofixing a quarterly edition.19
Long term preservation of digital information is a somewhat moreglobal problem than secure backup. From the previous section, it should
be clear that on any given day, there exist three copies of the Encyclopedia (one on the principal computer, one on external hard drive andone recoverable from the backup tapes).20 We maintain an archive of the
backup tapes of the Encyclopedia in a separate building. We also haveseveral similar UNIX workstations in the lab housing the main Encyclopedia workstation and each of these computers could serve as a backup
machine. As long as we maintain the present edition and past quarterly
editions on 3 separate hardware devices (transferring the data to newtechnology as it becomes available) and follow the security measures outlined above (employing whatever new backup systems become available),
19 The idea of fixing a quarterly edition has the added virtue of providing quarterly
deadlines for the authors. This might help the Editors set specific goals for the authors
and timetables for completing certain sections of the Encyclopedia.
20 Actually, there are four copies, for a second copy of each entry is kept in the
Editor’s home directory on the principal computer. Whenever the Editor makes any
modifications to an entry, a copy is immediately placed in this directory. By contrast,
the backups on the external drive and tape drive are made once a day, in the earlymorning hours.

A dynamic encyclopedia following the above plan, therefore, needs thefollowing administrative staff: an Editor, a computer consultant, andan Editorial Board. The Editor will coordinate the activities of the encyclopedia and maintain the encyclopedia’s host machine. The lattermay involve some general UNIX system administration, such as updating the httpd installation and search engines, preparing a sample entry
that demonstrates entry style, and maintaining the authors’ accounts. A
computer consultant will write the scripts described above, oversee thetechnical development of the project, and apprise the Editor of new developments taking place on the Internet.21 Though an advisory board is
not necessary, we have one to help us choose the members of our Editorial Board. The Editorial Board will be responsible for soliciting qualified
authors to write entries on appropriate topics, and also for evaluating theentries contributed by the authors they solicit.
With a larger budget and support staff, a complete ‘work-flow’ analysis could be developed, which noted and recorded the various (kinds of)transactions between editor and authors and between editor and board
member. The Encyclopedia database should keep track of more information about the state of an entry than ours does.22 At some point, weplan to develop a program which automatically sends out notices when
it is time for the author of a particular entry to update their entry or
bibliography. No doubt there are other ways to automate administrative
tasks, and when time and money permit, we plan to implement them.
Although we have designed our dynamic encyclopedia principally withan eye toward solving the update problem, such an encyclopedia has otheradvantages. One is that there are no constraints on the length or number
21 If the Editor has no interest or skills in UNIX system administration, the computerconsultant could be assigned these tasks as well.
22 For example, we don’t currently record when an entry is first put online, whether
the last update was a substantive update to the content or an editorial update to fix
poorly written HTML code, the amount of time elapsed since the entry was commissioned, how frequently the entry has been updated, when the Board member responsible for the entry last commented on it, etc. Given our limited budget, we have reliedon our email record and and calendar to keep track of many of these transactions.

17

The Problem of Updating Encyclopediasof entries other than that imposed by disk space. This feature easily accommodates multiple entries on a single topic (each reflecting a separate
perspective). Another advantage is ease of distribution. By distributing
the encyclopedia over the World Wide Web, it becomes accessible to anyone with Internet access. A third advantage is that the pace at which theencyclopedia can be published is limited by the fastest rather the slowest
authors. There is no longer a lag between the time the entry is sent to the
Editors and the time the entry can be published. Finally, since entries
can be improved over time, any biases they may reflect can be found andeliminated. Thus, our solution to the problem of updating encyclopedias
also provides a solution to the problem of avoiding bias in encyclopedias.

Bibliography
Baecker, R., 1993, Readings in Groupware and Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Assisting Human-Human Collaboration, Morgan Kaufman Press
Baecker, R., Grudin, J., Buxton, W., and Greenberg, S. (eds.), 1995,
Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000 , Morgan Kaufman Press
Greenberg, S., (ed.), 1991, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work andGroupware, Academic Press
Greif, I., (ed.), 1988, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of
Readings, Morgan Kaufman Press
Medina-Mora, R., Winograd, T., Flores, R., and Flores, F., 1992, ‘The
Action Workflow Approach to Workflow Management Technology’, inProceedings of the (1992) Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work , Association of Computing Machinery Press