page_title: World Book Encyclopedia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: World Book Encyclopedia / History
caption_attribution_description: English: World Book Encyclopedia (1990). Photo taken in the library of Central European University.
context_page_description: The World Book Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia published in the United States. The encyclopedia was designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, and medical subjects.
  It is based in Chicago, Illinois. Today, the company claims that World Book "is the most up-to-date commercial encyclopedia". According to the company, the latest edition, World Book Encyclopedia 2019, contains 14,000 pages distributed along 22 volumes and more than 17,000 articles in total which represents an increase of 7.05% from the last edition
  World Book also publishes children's non-fiction and picture books under the Bright Connections Media imprint, and educational development and supplemental instructional resources through Incentive Publications by World Book.
context_section_description: World Book was founded by Chicago publishers J. H. Hansen and John Bellow, who realized that existing encyclopedias were off-putting to young readers. In 1915, they enlisted the help of Michael Vincent O'Shea, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin.  
  The first edition of The World Book Encyclopedia was published (as simply The World Book) in 1917, by the Hanson-Roach-Fowler Company. "As a rule," wrote O'Shea, the founding editor, in the preface of that first edition, "encyclopedias are apt to be quite formal and technical. A faithful effort has been made in the World Book to avoid this common defect." 
  In 1919, World Book became the property of W.F. Quarrie & Company. The new owners created an editorial board to help make sure the entries were aligned with what students studied, from kindergarten through high school.
  In 1945, the World Book became the property of Field Enterprises.
  In 1978, World Book was purchased by Scott Fetzer Company, an Ohio conglomerate that left the encyclopedia company in Chicago. That year, the company had a sales force of 60,000 and vastly outsold Encyclopædia Britannica.
  In 1985, the Scott Fetzer Company was purchased by Berkshire Hathaway. In the late 1980s, while the World Book sales force had declined, it still had 45,000 door-to-door representatives. For the year 1990, Berkshire Hathaway reported that the business of producing the encyclopedia had generated profits of $32 million. But as sales plunged in the 1990s, World Book's results were no longer broken out in Berkshire Hathaway financial reports.
  In 2009, Funk & Wagnalls was acquired by World Book Encyclopedia; the company's Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia had ceased publication in 1997. Starting in the 2000s, the popularity of World Book declined coinciding with the rise of Wikipedia, which caused  the company to focus on its digital content and sales to academic institutions alongside children’s trade publications.
  As of 2018, the only official sales outlet for the World Book encyclopedia is the company’s website; the official list price is $1,199. A company representative said, that year, that "thousands” of print sets are still ordered annually, mostly by schools who use them as teaching tools for library research skills; public libraries and homeschooling families are also frequent purchasers.
caption: World Book Encyclopedia (1990)
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