Encyclopædia Britannica

The '*** (Latin for "British Encyclopædia"), previously published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a popular encyclopædia which since 2011 is published as an online encyclopædia. 
## Overview
The **Encyclopædia Britannica*' was originally only printed on paper, but late in the 20th century it expanded to have digital, or computer versions as well. Since 2010, it's out of print in paper versions. The encyclopædia is split into many books. The articles in the books are arranged in alphabetical order. There have been versions of it that are for children as well. It is the largest printed encyclopædia in English, and the second largest encyclopædia. The largest is Wikipedia.
### The Macropædia
The encyclopædia was once very small, the first edition in 1768 only had 3 books. Slowly it became bigger. The last edition, the 15th, started in 1974, has 29 books, plus two indexes. It includes an extra book called Propædia, to classify knowledge. The 29 books and made up of a Macropædia and a Micropædia.

The Macropædia is a larger one, with more detailed articles that can be as long as 300 pages, made up of 17 books, while the Micropædia is the smaller one with many much shorter articles that are usually less than 750 words. 

The Micropædia is used for fast-checking, but for more detailed information, people have to use the Macropædia. Each book is very big, more than 1,000 pages per book. Every year, an update book was published. The last yearbook was for 2018, published in 2017.

### Transition to electronic publishing
In March 2012, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced it would no longer publish printed editions, and would focus instead on the online version, *Encyclopædia Britannica Online*.
### Audience
The articles in the Britannica are for educated adults, not for children, and written by about 100 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopædia now. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew very popular, with its third edition in 1801 comprising of 21 books.
### Size
The size of the Britannica is almost the same since the 1930s, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. The encyclopædia was once owned by British people. In the 20th century it was American-owned, but it is still written in British English. Over time, the encyclopædia has had difficulties trying to earn money, which almost every encyclopædia is facing.

## History 
Many different people have owned the Britannica. They include Scottish publisher A & C Black, Horace Everett Hooper, Sears Roebuck and William Benton. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is owned by Jacqui Safra, a Swiss billionaire and actor.

Information technology has become better and more electronic encyclopædias such as *Microsoft Encarta* and Wikipedia have made people not want to buy encyclopædias in print anymore. 

So that it still can survive, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has kept on telling people that the *Britannica* is good and accurate, made the encyclopædia cheaper, and made electronic versions on CD-ROM, DVD and the World Wide Web (WWW). Since the early 1930s, the company has also promoted spin-off reference works.
### Editions
#### Introduction
There are 15 official editions of the encyclopædia, with some extensions to the 3rd and 5th editions (see the Table below). Actually, one can say that the 10th edition was only an extension to the 9th edition, and the 12th and 13th editions were extensions to the 11th edition. The 15th edition was reorganised in 1985, and the updated, current version is the 15th edition.

Throughout history, the *Britannica* sought to be an excellent reference book to provide learning materials. In 1974, the 15th edition had a third wish: to put together all that everyone knows. The history of the *Britannica* can be divided into five main eras, or lengths of time.
#### First era
In its first years (1st–6th editions, 1768–1826), the *Britannica* was controlled by the people who first wrote it, Colin Macfarquhar and Andrew Bell, and by their friends and relations, such as Thomas Bonar, George Gleig and Archibald Constable. 

The *Britannica* was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, a city in Scotland, called the *Encyclopædia Britannica, or, A dictionary of arts and sciences, compiled upon a new plan*. It was written to replace the French *Encyclopédie*. Its logo, which is the floral emblem of Scotland, shows that the *Britannica* was a Scottish business. 

The encyclopædia being created is one of the most famous events that happened in the time when Scotland started inventing many things, or the Age of Enlightenment.  

The *Britannica* started as three-book set ( in the 1st edition) written by one young editor — William Smellie. Many said that the first edition of the encyclopædia lack accuracy, and had many problems in it. Slowly, the *Britannica* changed, in the first era, to a 20-book set written by many people. 

Although a few other encyclopædias had been fighting with the *Britannica*, such as ''Rees's Cyclopædia'' and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's *Encyclopædia Metropolitana*, these encyclopedias either went bankrupt or were not finished because the people writing them argued. 

When the first era was almost over, the *Britannica* had many people helping to write it, all having different types of skills. The encyclopædia managed to get so many people by inviting their friends to help.
#### Second era
 article on Egypt, which included the translation of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone (pictured).]]
In the second era (7th–9th editions, 1827–1901), the *Britannica* was owned by the Edinburgh company, A & C Black. Although some of the people who helped write the *Britannica* helped because they were friends of the most important editors, many other people wanted to help the *Britannica* because it was becoming very successful. 

These people came from many other countries, and some of them were very famous for the things they wrote about. An index of all the articles was written to add to the 7th edition of the encyclopædia, and they continued to make an index until 1974. 

The first English chief editor was Thomas Spencer Baynes, who led the making of the famous 9th edition, which is also called the "Scholar's Edition". The 9th edition is considered to be the *Britannica* most meant for students ever written. However, at the end of the 19th century, the 9th edition was already too old and the *Britannica* had many financial problems.
#### Third era
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In the third era (10th–14th editions, 1901–1973), the *Britannica* was owned by American people, who started to advertise a lot to earn more money. The American owners also slowly made the *Britannica's* articles simpler, so it could serve more people. 

The 11th edition is said by many people to be the best edition of the encyclopedia. Its owner, Horace Hooper, worked extremely hard to make the 11th edition perfect. The *Micropædia* articles are supposed to be for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more information in the *Macropædia*. The *Macropædia* articles are supposed to be well-written articles on their subjects and articles of information where you cannot find anywhere else. So, readers are asked to try to use the indexes or the *Propædia*, which organises what is in the *Britannica* volumes by topic.

The use of the *Propædia* is its "Outline of Knowledge," which wants to organise all of everything people know. The *Propædia* also has diagrams printed on transparent paper of big topics and a section which lists the people working together to make the encyclopædia.

Altogether, the *Micropædia* and *Macropædia* have about 40 million words and 24,000 pictures. The other spellings of the word is sometimes shown with a link, for example "Color: *see* Colour."

Since 1936, the articles of the *Britannica* have been revised often, with about 10% of the articles brought to be re-written each year. but another Britannica web-site says only 35% of the articles were revised.

The way the articles are arranged (in alphabet order) in the *Micropædia* and *Macropædia* is very accurate. Non-English letters are ignored and articles with numbers such as "War of 1812" are arranged as if the number had been written out ("War of Eighteen-twelve"). If the articles have the same names, articles about persons go first, then by places, then by things. People with the same names are arranged first alphabetically by country and then by their time. Similarly, places that have the same names are arranged by alphabet by the country they are in.

### Other Britannicas 
#### Printed 
There are a few smaller versions of the *Britannica* encyclopedias. The *Britannica Concise Encyclopædia*, written in one book, has 28,000 shorter articles. *Compton's by Britannica,* published in 2007, with the old *Compton's Encyclopedia,* in it is written for teenagers who are 10–17 years old and has 26 books and 11,000 pages in it.

A *Children's Britannica* was published by the company in 1960; this was edited by John Armitage and written for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales; the writers were almost all British.   Other books are *My First Britannica*, written for children who are six to twelve years old, and the *Britannica Discovery Library*, written for children who are three to six years old (issued in 1974 to 1991). Since 1938, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has published a *Book of the Year'' every year, with information about the past year's events, which is written online since the 1994 edition (with the events of 1993). The company also publishes a few books on special topics, such as *Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to the Life and Works of the Bard* (Wiley, 2006).

#### Electronic 
The *Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2006 DVD* contains over 55 million words and over 100,000 articles. It includes 73,645 *Britannica* articles, with the other articles from the *Britannica Student Encyclopædia,* the *Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia* and the *Britannica Book of the Year*s (1993–2004), plus a few old articles from old editions of the encyclopædia. The whole DVD also includes other bonus tools including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links. It also has study tools and a dictionary and thesaurus from Merriam-Webster.

*Encyclopædia Britannica Online* is a web site with more than 120,000 articles and is updated often. It has features, updates and links to news reports from *The New York Times* and the BBC every day. People need to pay to use the website. Special discounts are given to schools, colleges and libraries since these big groups of people are important in Britannica's business. Articles can be read online for free, but only the first few sentences can be seen. Beginning in early 2007, the *Britannica* let people read the articles for free if they are linked to another website, since these links let the articles appear more often and easily in search engines.

On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. said that it was working with mobile phone search company AskMeNow to make an encyclopædia in phones. Users can send a question by text message, and AskMeNow will search *Britannica*'s 28,000-article encyclopædia to answer the user. An idea to use a wiki-Britannica was announced on the June 3, 2008. A lot of people will be involved, with the Britannica staff editing important parts.

## Related pages
* Propædia
* Micropædia
* Macropædia
* Jewish Virtual Library
* *Encyclopaedia Metallum*
* *Encyclopaedia Hebraica*
* Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
* 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

## Further reading 
* 
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* 
* Lee, Timothy. *Techdirt Interviews Britannica President Jorge Cauz*, Techdirt.com, June 2, 2008
* 

## References 
## Other websites 
* *Encyclopædia Britannica* Online. The official website.

;Historical articles:
* "Encyclopaedia Britannica". In *Encyclopaedia Britannica* Online.
* 1768–2005:l'aventure Britannica . History of the *Britannica*, from the French Britannica site.
* Vintage Britannica or "Evolving Knowledge" . Excerpts on various topics drawn from various *Britannica* editions.

;Earlier editions (in the public domain in the U.S.A.):
* Preface to the 1st edition of the *Britannica*, by William Smellie.
* The article "History" in the 3rd edition of the *Britannica*.
* Articles and illustrations  from the 9th and 10th editions of the *Britannica*.
* Scanned version of the 11th edition of the *Britannica*.
* Text version of the 11th edition of the *Britannica*. (Partial)
* James Mill's essay on "Government" , from the Supplement to the 5th edition of the *Britannica* (1820).

;Recent events:
* Technical aspects of the ''Britannica's* online and CD/DVD-ROM editions.
* Britannica disagrees with Wikipedia comparison study.
* To wire or not to wire? Encyclopædia Britannica vs. Microsoft Encarta
:A comparison of the two encyclopedias by Panagiota Alevizou, published in the *Educational Technology & Society* journal.
* Encyclopaedia Britannica To Follow Modified Wikipedia Model | Epicenter from Wired.com

;Business history:
* "Dusting off the Britannica". Article from *BusinessWeek* magazine (1997).
* "Death of a salesforce" . Article from Salon (1996).
* "The Work of the Encyclopedia in the Age of Electronic Reproduction" . Article by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in *First Monday''.
* The Crisis at Encyclopædia Britannica  Kellogg School of Management.