Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia
Reference work
A reference work is a compendium of information, usually of a specific type, compiled in a book for ease of reference. That is, the information is intended to be quickly found when needed. Reference works are usually referred to for particular pieces of information, rather than read beginning to end...
, a compendium
Compendium
A compendium is a concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A compendium may summarize a larger work. In most cases the body of knowledge will concern some delimited field of human interest or endeavour , while a "universal" encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of...
holding a summary of information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
from either all branches of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
or a particular branch of knowledge.
Encyclopedias are divided into article
Article (publishing)
An article is a written work published in a print or electronic medium. It may be for the purpose of propagating the news, research results, academic analysis or debate.-News articles:...
s or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by article name. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
. Generally speaking, unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
information about word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
s, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information to cover the thing or concept for which the article name stands.
Encyclopedias have existed for around 2,000 years; the oldest still in existence, Naturalis Historia
Naturalis Historia
The Natural History is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77–79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny...
, was written in ca.
Circa
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
77 CE
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
by Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
. The modern encyclopedia evolved out of dictionaries around the 17th century. Historically, some encyclopedias were contained in one volume
Volume
Volume is the quantity of three-dimensional space enclosed by some closed boundary, for example, the space that a substance or shape occupies or contains....
, but some, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the world´s largest Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana
Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana
The Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana is a Spanish encyclopedia comprising 72 volumes published from 1908 to 1930 plus a ten-volume appendix published 1930-1933...
, became huge multi-volume works. Some modern encyclopedias are electronic and are often freely available, for example Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
and Citizendium
Citizendium
Citizendium is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project launched by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001....
.
The word encyclopaedia comes from the Koine Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία, from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, transliterated enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education": enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning "circular, recurrent, required regularly, general" + paideia (παιδεία), meaning "education, rearing of a child". but it was reduced to a single word due to an error by rinascimental copyists of Latin manuscripts. Together, the phrase literally translates as "complete instruction" or "complete knowledge".
Pliny the Elder
Naturalis Historia
The Natural History is an encyclopedia published circa AD 77–79 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny...
of Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
statesman living in the 1st century AD. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, art and architecture, medicine, geography, geology and all aspects of the world around him. He stated in the preface that he had compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 different works by over 200 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published circa AD 77-79, although he probably never finished proofing the work before his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The scheme of his great work is vast and comprehensive, being nothing short of a compendium of learning and of art so far as they are connected with nature, or draw their materials from nature. He admits that
My subject is a barren one – the world of nature, or in other words life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, many barbarian words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path is not a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there is not one of us who has made the same venture, nor yet one Greek who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.
And he admits the problems of writing such a work:
It is a difficult task to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, brilliance to the common-place, light to the obscure, attraction to the stale, credibility to the doubtful, but nature to all things and all her properties to nature.
Although there were earlier works of a similar nature, by Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...
for example, Pliny's was the only one to survive the Dark Ages. It became very popular in the Roman world, and survived, with many copies being made and distributed in the western world. It 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
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
world, and especially Roman art
Roman art
Roman art has the visual arts made in Ancient Rome, and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Major forms of Roman art are architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work...
, Roman technology
Roman technology
Roman technology is the engineering practice which supported Roman civilization and made the expansion of Roman commerce and Roman military possible over nearly a thousand years....
and Roman engineering
Roman engineering
Romans are famous for their advanced engineering accomplishments, although some of their own inventions were improvements on older ideas, concepts and inventions. Technology for bringing running water into cities was developed in the east, but transformed by the Romans into a technology...
. It is also a recognised source for medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, mineralogy
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
, zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
and many other topics not discussed by other classical authors. Among many interesting entries are those for the elephant
Elephant
Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...
and the murex
Murex
Murex is a genus of medium to large sized predatory tropical sea snails. These are carnivorous marine gastropod molluscs in the family Muricidae, commonly calle "murexes" or "rock snails"...
snail, the much sought-after source of Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple , also known as royal purple, imperial purple or imperial dye, is a purple-red natural dye, which is extracted from sea snails, and which was possibly first produced by the ancient Phoenicians...
dye.
Although his work has been criticized for the lack of candor in checking the "facts", some of his text has been confirmed by recent research, like the spectacular remains of Roman gold mines in Spain, especially at Las Medulas
Las Médulas
Las Médulas is a historical site near the town of Ponferrada in the region of El Bierzo , which used to be the most important gold mine in the Roman Empire...
, which Pliny probably saw in operation while a Procurator
Promagistrate
A promagistrate is a person who acts in and with the authority and capacity of a magistrate, but without holding a magisterial office. A legal innovation of the Roman Republic, the promagistracy was invented in order to provide Rome with governors of overseas territories instead of having to elect...
there a few years before he compiled the encyclopedia. Although many of the mining
Mining
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
methods are now redundant, such as hushing
Hushing
Hushing is an ancient and historic mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation. Mineral veins are often hidden below soil and sub-soil, which must be stripped away to...
and fire-setting
Fire-setting
Fire-setting is a method of mining used since prehistoric times up to the Middle Ages. Fires were set against a rock face to heat the stone, which was then doused with water...
, it is Pliny who recorded them for posterity, so helping us understand their importance in a modern context. Pliny makes clear in the preface to the work that he had checked his facts by reading and comparing the works of others, as well as referring to them by name. Many such books are now lost works and remembered only by his references, much like the lost sources mentioned in the work of Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
a century earlier.
Middle Ages
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
and Philologia") written by Martianus Capella
Martianus Capella
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a pagan writer of Late Antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education...
(4th-5th century) was very influential on the successive medieval encyclopedias. It consists in a complete encyclopedia of classical erudition. It firstly introduced the division and classification of the seven liberal arts
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
(trivium and quadrivium
Quadrivium
The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities, after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" , and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century...
), followed by many successive works along the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
.
The first Christian encyclopedia were the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus
Cassiodorus
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank.- Life :Cassiodorus was born at Scylletium, near Catanzaro in...
(543
543
Year 543 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 543 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Religion :* The doctrine of apocatastasis is...
-560
560
Year 560 was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 560 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Europe :* Ceawlin of Wessex becomes King of Wessex .*...
), which were divided in two parts: the first one dealt with Christian Divinity; the second one described the seven liberal arts.
Saint Isidore of Seville, one of the greatest scholars of the early Middle Ages, is widely recognized as being the author of the first known encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, the Etymologiae
Etymologiae
Etymologiae is an encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. It forms a bridge between a condensed epitome of classical learning at the close of Late Antiquity and the inheritance received, in large part through Isidore's work, by the early Middle Ages...
or Origines (around 630), in which he compiled a sizable portion of the learning available at his time, both ancient and modern. The encyclopedia has 448 chapters in 20 volumes, and is valuable because of the quotes and fragments of texts by other authors that would have been lost had they not been collected by Saint Isidore.
The most popular enciyclopedia of Carolingian
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the...
Age was the De universo or De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius , also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, the archbishop of Mainz in Germany and a theologian. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis . He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible...
, written about 830
830
Year 830 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.-Africa:* Creation of the Ad-dimnah hospital in al-Qayrawan by the Aghlabid ruler Ziyadat Allah I.- Europe :...
, which was based on Etymologiae.
The most widely diffused encyclopedia at the beginning of High Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....
was the Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor.
Bartholomeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (1240) was the most widely read and quoted encyclopedia in the High Middle Ages
High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages was the period of European history around the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries . The High Middle Ages were preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which by convention end around 1500....
while Vincent of Beauvais
Vincent of Beauvais
The Dominican friar Vincent of Beauvais wrote the Speculum Maius, the main encyclopedia that was used in the Middle Ages.-Early life:...
's Speculum Majus (1260) was the most ambitious encyclopedia in the late-medieval period at over 3 million words.
Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
encyclopedias were compendia of informations about both Ancient
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Byzantine Greece. The first of them was the Bibliotheca
Bibliotheca (Photius)
The Bibliotheca or Myriobiblon was a 9th century work of Byzantine Patriarch Photius, dedicated to his brother and composed of 279 reviews of books which he had read. It was not meant to be used as a reference work, but was widely used as such in the 9th century, and is generally seen as the first...
written by the patriarch
Patriarch
Originally a patriarch was a man who exercised autocratic authority as a pater familias over an extended family. The system of such rule of families by senior males is called patriarchy. This is a Greek word, a compound of πατριά , "lineage, descent", esp...
Photius (9th century).
The Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
or Souda (Greek: Σοῦδα) is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers.
Arabic and Persian
The early Muslim compilations of knowledgeHistoriography of early Islam
The historiography of early Islam refers to the study of the early origins of Islam based on a critical analysis, evaluation, and examination of authentic primary source materials and the organization of these sources into a narative timeline....
in the Middle Ages included many comprehensive works, and much development of what we now call scientific method
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, historical method
Historical method
Historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write histories in the form of accounts of the past. The question of the nature, and even the possibility, of a sound historical method is raised in the...
, and citation
Citation
Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...
. About year 960, the Brethren of Purity
Brethren of Purity
The Brethren of Purity were a secret society of Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq, in the 10th century CE....
of Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...
were engaged in their Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE...
. Notable works include Abu Bakr al-Razi
Al-Razi
Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī , known as Rhazes or Rasis after medieval Latinists, was a Persian polymath,a prominent figure in Islamic Golden Age, physician, alchemist and chemist, philosopher, and scholar....
's encyclopedia of science, the Mutazilite Al-Kindi
Al-Kindi
' , known as "the Philosopher of the Arabs", was a Muslim Arab philosopher, mathematician, physician, and musician. Al-Kindi was the first of the Muslim peripatetic philosophers, and is unanimously hailed as the "father of Islamic or Arabic philosophy" for his synthesis, adaptation and promotion...
's prolific output of 270 books, and Ibn Sina's medical encyclopedia, which was a standard reference work for centuries. Also notable are works of universal history
Universal history
Universal history is basic to the Western tradition of historiography, especially the Abrahamic wellspring of that tradition. Simply stated, universal history is the presentation of the history of humankind as a whole, as a coherent unit.-Ancient authors:...
(or sociology) from Asharites, al-Tabri, al-Masudi, Tabari
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...
's History of the Prophets and Kings, Ibn Rustah, al-Athir
Ali ibn al-Athir
Abu al-Hassan Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad, better known as Ali 'Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir al-Jazari was a Kurdish Muslim historian from the Ibn Athir family...
, and Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...
, whose Muqadimmah contains cautions regarding trust in written records that remain wholly applicable today. These scholars had an incalculable influence on methods of research and editing, due in part to the Islamic practice of isnad which emphasized fidelity to written record, checking sources, and skeptical inquiry.
China
The enormous encyclopedic work in China of the Four Great Books of SongFour Great Books of Song
The Four Great Books of Song was compiled by Li Fang and others during the Song Dynasty . The term was coined after the last book was finished during the 11th century...
, compiled by the 11th century during the early Song Dynasty
Song Dynasty
The Song Dynasty was a ruling dynasty in China between 960 and 1279; it succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, and was followed by the Yuan Dynasty. It was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or paper money, and the first Chinese government to establish a...
(960–1279), was a massive literary undertaking for the time. The last encyclopedia of the four, the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau
Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau
The Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau was the largest encyclopedia compiled during the Chinese Song Dynasty . It was the last of the Four Great Books of Song, the previous three encyclopedias published in the 10th century....
, amounted to 9.4 million Chinese characters in 1,000 written volumes. There were many great encyclopedists throughout Chinese history, including the scientist and statesman Shen Kuo
Shen Kuo
Shen Kuo or Shen Gua , style name Cunzhong and pseudonym Mengqi Weng , was a polymathic Chinese scientist and statesman of the Song Dynasty...
(1031–1095) with his Dream Pool Essays
Dream Pool Essays
The Dream Pool Essays was an extensive book written by the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman Shen Kuo by 1088 AD, during the Song Dynasty of China...
of 1088, the statesman, inventor, and agronomist Wang Zhen
Wang Zhen (official)
Wang Zhen was an official of the Yuan Dynasty of China. He is credited with the invention of the first wooden movable type printing in the world, while his predecessor of the Song Dynasty , Bi Sheng , invented the world's first earthenware movable type printing...
(active 1290–1333) with his Nong Shu of 1313, and the written Tiangong Kaiwu of Song Yingxing
Song Yingxing
Song Yingxing , born in Yichun of Jiangxi, was a Chinese scientist and encyclopedist who lived during the late Ming Dynasty . He was the author of an encyclopedia that covered a wide variety of technical subjects, including the use of gunpowder weapons...
(1587–1666), the latter of whom was termed the "Diderot of China
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
" by British historian Joseph Needham
Joseph Needham
Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham, CH, FRS, FBA , also known as Li Yuese , was a British scientist, historian and sinologist known for his scientific research and writing on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as a fellow of the British...
.
The Chinese emperor Yongle
Yongle Emperor
The Yongle Emperor , born Zhu Di , was the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty of China from 1402 to 1424. His Chinese era name Yongle means "Perpetual Happiness".He was the Prince of Yan , possessing a heavy military base in Beiping...
of the Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
oversaw the compilation of the Yongle Encyclopedia
Yongle Encyclopedia
The Yongle Encyclopedia was a Chinese compilation of information commissioned by the Chinese Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle in 1403 and completed by 1408...
, one of the largest encyclopedias in history, which was completed in 1408 and comprised over 370 million Chinese characters in 11,000 handwritten volumes, of which only about 400 remain today. In the succeeding dynasty, emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the Ming Dynasty and followed by the Republic of China....
personally composed 40,000 poems as part of a 4.7 million page library in 4 divisions, including thousands of essays, called the Siku Quanshu
Siku Quanshu
The Siku Quanshu, variously translated as the Imperial Collection of Four, Emperor's Four Treasuries, Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature, or Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, is the largest collection of books in Chinese history and probably the most ambitious editorial...
which is probably the largest collection of books in the world. It is instructive to compare his title for this knowledge, Watching the waves in a Sacred Sea to a Western-style title for all knowledge. Encyclopedic works, both in imitation of Chinese encyclopedias and as independent works of their own origin, have been known to exist in Japan since the 9th century CE.
Renaissance
These 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 Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
the invention of printing
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
allowed a wider diffusion of encyclopedias and every scholar could have its own copy.
The De expetendis et fugiendis rebus by Giorgio Valla was posthumously printed in 1501 by Aldo Manuzio in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. This work followed the traditional scheme of liberal arts. However, Valla added the translation of ancient Greek works on mathematics (firstly by Archimedes
Archimedes
Archimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an...
), newly discovered and translated.
The Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch
Gregor Reisch
Gregor Reisch was a German Carthusian humanist writer. He is best known for his compilation Margarita philosophica.-Life:...
, printed in 1503, was a complete encyclopedia explaining the seven liberal arts.
17th–19th centuries
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.-Early life:...
' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the eighteenth century...
(1728), and the Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
of Diderot and D'Alembert (1751 onwards), as well as Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
and the Conversations-Lexikon, were the first to realize the form we would recognize today, with a comprehensive scope of topics, discussed in depth and organized in an accessible, systematic method. Chambers, in 1728, followed the earlier lead of John Harris's Lexicon Technicum
Lexicon technicum
Lexicon Technicum: Or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves was in many respects the first alphabetical encyclopedia written in English...
of 1704 and later editions (see also below); this work was by its title and content "A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves".
Much encyclopaedism of the French Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...
was based upon the notion of not including every fact known to humans, but only that knowledge that was necessary, where necessity was judged by a wide variety of criteria, leading to works of greatly varying sizes. Béroalde de Verville
Béroalde de Verville
François Béroalde de Verville was a French Renaissance novelist, poet and intellectual. He was the son of Matthieu Brouard , called "Béroalde", a professor of Agrippa d'Aubigné and Pierre de l'Estoile and a Huguenot; his mother, Marie Bletz, was the niece of the humanist and Hebrew scholar...
laid the foundation for his encyclopaedic works in a hexameral poem entitled Les cognoissances nécessaires for example. Often, the criteria had moral bases, such as in the case of Pierre de La Primaudaye
Pierre de La Primaudaye
Pierre de La Primaudaye was a French writer. He is known particularly for L'Academie Française, which was influential in English translations, from 1584 onwards, particularly The French Academie of 1618....
's L'Académie française and Guillaume Telin's Bref sommaire des sept vertus &c.. Encyclopaedists encountered several problems with this approach, including how to decide what to omit as unnecessary, how to structure knowledge that resisted structure (often simply as a consequence of the sheer amount of material that deserved inclusion), and how to cope with the influx of newly discovered knowledge and the effects that it had on prior structures.
The term encyclopaedia was coined by 15th century humanists who misread copies of their texts of Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
and Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
, and combined the two Greek words "enkyklios paideia" into one word. The phrase enkyklios paideia (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία) was used by Plutarch and the Latin rinascimental word Enciclopedia came from him.
The first work titled in this way was the Encyclopedia orbisque doctrinarum, hoc est omnium artium, scientiarum, ipsius philosophiae index ac divisio written by Johannes Aventinus
Johannes Aventinus
Johannes Aventinus was a Bavarian historian and philologist. He wrote Annals of Bavaria, a valuable record of the early history of Germany...
in 1517.
The English physician and philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne was an English author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric....
, specifically employed the word encyclopaedia for the first time in English as early as 1646 in the preface to the reader to describe his Pseudodoxia Epidemica
Pseudodoxia Epidemica
Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths, also known simply as Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors, is a work by Thomas Browne refuting the common errors and superstitions of his age. It first appeared in 1646 and went through five subsequent...
or Vulgar Errors, a series of refutations of common errors of his age. Browne structured his encyclopaedia upon the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance, the so-called 'scale of creation' which ascends a hierarchical ladder via the mineral, vegetable, animal, human, planetary and cosmological worlds. Browne's compendium went through no less than five editions, each revised and augmented, the last edition appearing in 1672. Pseudodoxia Epidemica found itself upon the bookshelves of many educated European readers for throughout the late 17th century and early 18th century it was translated, for many years it was not thought compatible with the French and Dutcheze, into the French, Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and German languages as well as Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
.
John Harris (writer)
John Harris was an English writer, scientist, and Anglican priest. He is best known as the editor of the Lexicon Technicum: Or, A Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences , the earliest of English encyclopaedias, and as the compiler of the Collection of Voyages and Travels which was...
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 explanation not merely of the terms used in the arts and sciences, but of the arts and sciences themselves. Sir Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
contributed his only published work on chemistry to the second volume of 1710. Its emphasis was on science—and conformably to the broad 18th-century understanding of the term 'science', its content extends beyond what would be called science or technology today, and includes topics from the humanities and fine arts, e.g. a substantial number from law, commerce, music, and heraldry. At about 1,200 pages, its scope can be considered as more that of an encyclopedic dictionary
Encyclopedic dictionary
An encyclopedic dictionary typically includes a large number of short listings, arranged alphabetically, and discussing a wide range of topics. Encyclopedic dictionaries can be general, containing articles on topics in many different fields; or they can specialize in a particular field...
than a true encyclopedia. Harris himself considered it a dictionary; the work is one of the first technical dictionaries in any language.
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers
Ephraim Chambers was an English writer and encyclopaedist, who is primarily known for producing the Cyclopaedia, or a Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences.-Early life:...
published his Cyclopaedia
Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
Cyclopaedia: or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the eighteenth century...
in 1728. It included a broad scope of subjects, used an alphabetic arrangement, relied on many different contributors and included the innovation of cross-referencing other sections within articles. Chambers has been referred to as the father of the modern encyclopedia for this two-volume work.
A French translation of Chambers' work inspired the Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
, perhaps the most famous early encyclopedia, notable for its scope, the quality of some contributions, and its political and cultural impact in the years leading up to the French revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. The Encyclopédie was edited by Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist, philosopher, and music theorist. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclopédie...
and Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....
and published in 17 volumes of articles, issued from 1751 to 1765, and 11 volumes of illustrations, issued from 1762 to 1772. Five volumes of supplementary material and a two volume index, supervised by other editors, were issued from 1776 to 1780 by Charles Joseph Panckoucke.
The Encyclopédie represented the essence of the French Enlightenment. The prospectus stated an ambitious goal: the Encyclopédie was to be a systematic analysis of the "order and interrelations of human knowledge." Diderot, in his Encyclopédie article of the same name, went further: "to collect all the knowledge that now lies scattered over the face of the earth, to make known its general structure to the men among we live, and to transmit it to those who will come after us," to make men not only wiser but also "more virtuous and more happy."
Realizing the inherent problems with the model of knowledge he had created, Diderot's view of his own success in writing the Encyclopédie were far from ecstatic. Diderot envisioned the perfect encyclopedia as more than the sum of its parts. In his own article on the encyclopedia, Diderot also wrote, "Were an analytical dictionary of the sciences and arts nothing more than a methodical combination of their elements, I would still ask whom it behooves to fabricate good elements." Diderot viewed the ideal encyclopedia as an index of connections. He realized that all knowledge could never be amassed in just one large work, but he hoped the relations among the subjects could be.
The Encyclopédie in turn inspired the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
, which had a modest beginning in Scotland: the first edition, issued between 1768 and 1771, had just three hastily completed volumes – A–B, C–L, and M–Z – with a total of 2,391 pages. By 1797, when the third edition was completed, it had been expanded to 18 volumes addressing a full range of topics, with articles contributed by a range of authorities on their subjects.
The German-language Conversations-Lexikon was published at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
from 1796 to 1808, in 6 volumes. Paralleling other 18th century encyclopedias, its scope was expanded beyond that of earlier publications, in an effort at comprehensiveness. It was, however, intended not for scholarly use but to provide results of research and discovery in a simple and popular form without extensive detail. This format, a contrast to the Encyclopædia Britannica, was widely imitated by later 19th century encyclopedias in Britain, the United States, France, Spain, Italy and other countries. Of the influential late-18th century and early-19th century encyclopedias, the Conversations-Lexikon is perhaps most similar in form to today's encyclopedias.
Rees's Cyclopaedia
Rees's Cyclopædia, or The New Cyclopaedia, or, Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences was an important 19th Century encyclopaedia which was regarded by some as subversive when it first appeared. It was edited by Revd...
(1802–1819) contains an enormous amount in information about the industrial and scientific revolutions of the time. A feature of these publications is the high-quality illustrations made by engravers like Wilson Lowry
Wilson Lowry
Wilson Lowry FRS was an English engraver. He was born at Whitehaven, Cumberland, the son of Strickland Lowry, a portrait painter. The family settled in Worcester, and Wilson Lowry, as a boy, left home to work as a house painter in London and Arundel, Sussex...
of art work supplied by specialist draftsmen like John Farey, Jr.
John Farey, Jr.
-Biography.:Farey was the eldest son of John Farey, Sr., the geologist, and was born at Lambeth, London on March 20, 1791. Details of his education are obscure, but he undertook a systematic study of the manufacturing industry of London between 1804-5...
Encyclopaedias were published in Scotland, as a result of the Scottish Enlightenment
Scottish Enlightenment
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By 1750, Scots were among the most literate citizens of Europe, with an estimated 75% level of literacy...
, for education there was of a higher standard than in the rest of the United Kingdom.
The 17-volume Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle and its supplements were published in France from 1866 to 1890.
Encyclopædia Britannica appeared in various editions throughout the century, and the growth of popular education
Popular education
Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
and the Mechanics Institutes, spearheaded by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge , founded in 1826, and wound up in 1848, was a Whiggish London organisation that published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high-minded material for the rapidly expanding reading public...
led to the production of the Penny Cyclopaedia
Penny Cyclopaedia
The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was a multi-volume encyclopedia edited by George Long and published by Charles Knight alongside the Penny Magazine. The volumes were published from 1833 to 1843.-External links:...
, as its title suggests issued in weekly numbers at a penny each like a newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
.
In the early 20th century, the Encyclopædia Britannica reached its eleventh edition, and inexpensive encyclopedias such as Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia is an encyclopedia edited by John Hammerton and published in London, England by The Education Book Co. Ltd in 1921/2....
and Everyman's Encyclopaedia
Everyman's Encyclopaedia
Everyman's Encyclopaedia is an encyclopedia published by Joseph Dent from 1913 as part of the Everyman's Library.- Editions :# 1913-4 - ed. Andrew Boyle, 12 vols....
were common.
International development
During the 19th and early 20th century, many smaller or less developed languages saw their first encyclopedias, using French, German, and English role models. While encyclopedias in larger languages, having large markets that could support a large editorial staff, churned out new 20-volume works in a few years and new editions with brief intervals, such publication plans often spanned a decade or more in smaller languages.The first large encyclopedia in Russian, Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary is, in its scope and style, the Russian counterpart to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps...
(86 volumes, 1890–1906), was a direct cooperation with the German Brockhaus.
Without such a formal cooperation, the Swedish Conversations-lexicon (4 volumes, 1821–1826) was a translation of Brockhaus 2nd edition. The first encyclopedia written originally in Swedish was Svenskt konversationslexikon (4 volumes, 1845–1851) by Per Gustaf Berg. A more ambitious project was Nordisk familjebok
Nordisk familjebok
Nordisk familjebok is a Swedish encyclopedia, published between 1876 and 1957.- History :The first edition was published in 20 volumes between 1876 and 1899. The first edition is known as the "Iðunn edition" because of the picture of Iðunn on the cover...
, established in 1875 and intended to comprise 6 volumes. But in 1885, when it had published 8 volumes and gotten only halfways (A–K), the publisher turned to the government for extra funding; encyclopedias had become national monuments. It was finished in 1894 with 18 volumes, with two supplement volumes (1896–1899).
The first major Danish encyclopedia was Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon
Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon
Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon is a Danish encyclopedia that has been published in several editions.The first edition, Salmonsens Store Illustrerede Konversationsleksikon was published in nineteen volumes 1893-1911 by Brødrene Salmonsens Forlag, and named after the publisher Isaac Salmonsen...
(19 volumes, 1893–1911).
In Norway, encyclopedias follow the unique history of the Norwegian language
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, the Bokmål
Bokmål
Bokmål is one of two official Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85–90% of the population in Norway, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language....
variant having branched off from Danish during the 19th century. After the national independence in 1905, publisher Aschehoug
Aschehoug
H. Aschehoug & Co , commonly known as Aschehoug, is one of the largest independent publishing companies in Norway. -History:...
(owned by William Martin Nygaard
William Martin Nygaard
William Martin Nygaard was a Norwegian publisher and politician.Nygaard was born in Kristiansand as the son of educator and linguist Marius Nygaard and his wife Elisabeth "Elise" Martin and brother of Kristen Brunfeldt Nygaard and Finn Nygaard...
) hired librarian Haakon Nyhuus to edit Illustreret norsk konversationsleksikon (6 volumes, 1907–1913), in later editions known as Aschehougs konversasjonsleksikon. In the Nynorsk
Nynorsk
Nynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
variant of the language, Norsk Allkunnebok (10 volumes, 1948–1966) was the only encyclopedia until the arrival of Wikipedia.
The first major Finnish encyclopedia was Tietosanakirja
Tietosanakirja
The , published in 11 volumes from 1909 to 1922, was the first Finnish language encyclopedia. It was published by Tietosanakirja-Osakeyhtiö, a joint effort between Otava and WSOY...
(11 volumes, 1909–1922). Inspired by the minority language example of Norsk Allkunnebok, a Swedish-language encyclopedia of Finland was initiated in 1969 and eventually published as Uppslagsverket Finland
Uppslagsverket Finland
Uppslagsverket Finland is a Swedish language encyclopedia with a focus on Finland and in particular Finland-Swedish subjects....
(3 volumes, 1982–1985; 2nd edition in 5 volumes, 2003–2007). With such a small market, the sales revenue only covered the printing cost, while editors were paid by endowments. In 2009 the entire contents was made available online, free of charge.
Already during czarist Russian rule, two editions appeared of the Latvian Konversācijas vārdnīca (2 volumes, 1891–1893; 4 volumes, 1906–1921). The larger Latviešu konversācijas vārdnīca (21 volumes, A–Tjepolo, 1927–1940) was interrupted by World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and never completed. After the war, Latvian emigrants in Sweden published Latvju enciklopēdija (3 volumes, 1950–1956, with a supplement volume in 1962). Soviet authories published Latvijas PSR mazās enciklopēdijas (3 volumes, 1967–1970) and Latvijas padomju enciklopēdija (10 volumes, 1981–1988).
Similarly, in the history of Lithuanian encyclopedias
Lithuanian encyclopedias
Lithuanian encyclopedias are encyclopedias published in the Lithuanian language or encyclopedias about Lithuania and Lithuania-related topics. The first known attempt to create a Lithuanian encyclopedia was in 1883, when Jonas Jacevičius failed to get permission from the Tsarist authorities for...
, the Lietuviškoji enciklopedija (9 volumes A–J, 1933–1941) was interrupted by World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and never completed. Lithuanian emigrants in the United States published Lietuvių enciklopedija (35 volumes, 1953–1966). Soviet authorities published Mažoji lietuviškoji tarybinė enciklopedija (3 volumes, 1966–1971), Lietuviškoji tarybinė enciklopedija (12 volumes, 1976–1985), and Tarybų Lietuvos enciklopedija
Encyclopedia of Soviet Lithuania
The Encyclopedia of Soviet Lithuania was an encyclopedia of Lithuanian SSR, covering topics such as archeology, history, nature, science, cultural heritage, cities, districts, biographies of famous people and politics, only about Lithuania. It was published in four volumes, between 1985-1988 in...
(4 volumes, 1985–1988).
First Turkish encyclopedia was Kamus-ül-Ulûm ve’l-Maarif written by Ali Suvai in 1870 after that Ahmet Rifat Efendi's 7 volumes work "Lûgaat-i Tarihiye ve Coğrafiye" (Dictionary of History and Geography) published in Istanbul at 1881.
See also this list of historical encyclopedias.
20th century
Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia
Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia is an encyclopedia edited by John Hammerton and published in London, England by The Education Book Co. Ltd in 1921/2....
and the Children's Encyclopaedia appeared in the early 1920s.
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
Funk and Wagnalls
Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English Language , and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English...
.
The second half of the 20th century also saw the publication of several encyclopedias that were notable for synthesizing important topics in specific fields, often by means of new works authored by significant researchers. Such encyclopedias included The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published in 1967 and now in its second edition), and Elsevier's Handbooks In Economics series. Encyclopedias of at least one volume in size exist for most if not all academic discipline
Academic discipline
An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined , and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to...
s, including, typically, such narrow topics such as bioethics
Bioethics
Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy....
and African American history
African American history
African-American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans held in the United States from 1619 to 1865...
.
By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s for use with personal computers. Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Encarta
Encarta
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
, 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.
Traditional encyclopedias are written by a number of employed text writers, usually people with an academic degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
, and distributed as proprietary
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
content.
Encyclopedias are essentially derivative from what has gone before, and particularly in the 19th century, copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
was common among encyclopedia editors. However, modern encyclopedias are not merely larger compendia, including all that came before them. To make space for modern topics, valuable material of historic use regularly had to be discarded, at least before the advent of digital encyclopedias. Moreover, the opinions and world views of a particular generation can be observed in the encyclopedic writing of the time. For these reasons, old encyclopedias are a useful source of historical information, especially for a record of changes in science and technology.
As of 2007, old encyclopedias whose copyright has expired
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
, such as the 1911 edition of Britannica, are also the only free content
Free content
Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work...
English encyclopedias released in print form. However, works such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedias in Russian and in the world, issued by the Soviet state from 1926 to 1990, and again since 2002 .-Editions:There were three editions...
, which were created in the public domain, exist as free content encyclopedias in other languages.
Free encyclopedias
The concept of a new free encyclopedia began with the InterpediaInterpedia
Interpedia was the name given to the first proposals for an Internet encyclopedia which would allow anyone to contribute by writing articles and submitting them to the central catalog of all Interpedia pages....
proposal on Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based online encyclopedia to which anyone could submit content and that would be freely accessible. Early projects in this vein included Everything2
Everything2
Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
and Open Site
Open Site
Open-Site, the Open Encyclopedia Project, is a free internet encyclopedia founded in 2002 by Michael J. Flickinger in an effort to build a free categorized community-built encyclopedia, inspired by the Open Directory Project...
. In 1999, Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
proposed the GNUPedia
GNUpedia
GNUPedia was a project to create a free content encyclopedia under the auspices of the Free Software Foundation...
, 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
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
philosophy.
It was not until Nupedia
Nupedia
Nupedia was an English-language Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief...
and later Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
that a stable free encyclopedia project was able to be established on the Internet.
The English Wikipedia became the world's largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage and by late 2005, Wikipedia had produced over two million articles in more than 80 languages with content licensed under the copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
. As of August 2009, Wikipedia had over 3 million articles in English and well over 10 million combined in over 250 languages. Wikipedia currently has articles in English. Since 2003, other free encyclopedias like the Chinese-language Baidu Baike
Baidu Baike
Baidu Encyclopedia is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations....
and Hudong, as well as English language encyclopedias like Citizendium
Citizendium
Citizendium is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project launched by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001....
and Knol
Knol
Knol is a Google project that aims to include user-written articles on a range of topics. The project was led by Udi Manber of Google, announced December 13, 2007, and was opened in beta to the public on July 23, 2008 with a few hundred articles mostly in the health and medical field.Knol has no...
have appeared.
21st century
The encyclopedia's hierarchical structure and evolving nature is particularly adaptable to a digital formatDigital media
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...
, and all major printed multi-subject encyclopedias had moved to this method of delivery by the end of the 20th century. Disk-based
Disk storage
Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks...
, typically DVD-ROM or CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
format, publications have the advantage of being cheaply produced and easily portable. Additionally, they can include media
Electronic media
Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical energy for the end-user to access the content. This is in contrast to static media , which today are most often created electronically, but don't require electronics to be accessed by the end-user in the printed form...
which are impossible to store in the printed format, such as animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
s, audio and video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
. Hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
ing between conceptually related items is also a significant benefit, although even Diderot's encyclopedia had cross-referencing.
On-line encyclopedias offer the additional advantage of being dynamic: new information can be presented almost immediately, rather than waiting for the next release of a static format, as with a disk- or paper-based publication. Many printed encyclopedias traditionally published annual supplemental volumes ("yearbooks") to update events between editions, as a partial solution to the problem of staying up-to-date, but this of course required the reader to check both the main volumes and the supplemental volumes. Some disk-based encyclopedias offer subscription-based access to online updates, which are then integrated with the content already on the user's hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
in a manner not possible with a printed encyclopedia.
Information in a printed encyclopedia necessarily needs some form of hierarchical structure. Traditionally, the method employed is to present the information ordered alphabetically by the article title. However with the advent of dynamic electronic formats the need to impose a pre-determined structure is less necessary. Nonetheless, most electronic encyclopedias still offer a range of organizational strategies for the articles, such as by subject, area, or alphabetically.
Digital encyclopedias also offer greater search abilities than printed versions. While the printed versions rely on indexes to assist in searching for topics, computer accessible versions allow searching through article text for keywords or phrases.
Characteristics
The modern encyclopaedia was developed from the dictionaryDictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
in the 18th century. Historically, both encyclopaedias and dictionaries have been researched and written by well-educated, well-informed content experts, but they are significantly different in structure. A dictionary is a linguistic work which primarily focuses on alphabetical listing of words and their definitions. Synonym
Synonym
Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...
ous 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
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
, analysis or background for the word defined. While it may offer a definition, it may leave the reader lacking in understanding
Understanding
Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to think about it and use concepts to deal adequately with that object....
the meaning, significance or limitations of a term, and how the term relates to a broader field of knowledge.
To address those needs, an encyclopaedia article is typically non linguistic, and covers not a word, but a subject or discipline. As well as defining and listing synonymous terms for the topic, the article is able to treat it in more depth and convey the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject. An encyclopaedia article also often includes many map
Map
A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
s and illustration
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...
s, as well as bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
and statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
.
Four major elements define an encyclopaedia: its subject matter, its scope, its method of organization, and its method of production:
- Encyclopaedias can be general, containing articles on topics in every field (the English-language Encyclopædia Britannica and German BrockhausBrockhaus EnzyklopädieThe Brockhaus Enzyklopädie is a German-language encyclopedia published by Brockhaus.The first edition originated in the Conversations-Lexikon mit vorzüglicher Rücksicht auf die gegenwärtigen Zeiten by Renatus Gotthelf Löbel and Christian Wilhelm Franke, published in Leipzig 1796-1808...
are well-known examples). General encyclopaedias often contain guides on how to do a variety of things, as well as embedded dictionaries and gazetteerGazetteerA gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names , used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social...
s. There are also encyclopaedias that cover a wide variety of topics but from a particular cultural, ethnic, or national perspective, such as the Great Soviet EncyclopediaGreat Soviet EncyclopediaThe Great Soviet Encyclopedia is one of the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedias in Russian and in the world, issued by the Soviet state from 1926 to 1990, and again since 2002 .-Editions:There were three editions...
or Encyclopaedia JudaicaEncyclopaedia JudaicaThe Encyclopaedia Judaica is a 26-volume English-language encyclopedia of the Jewish people and their faith, Judaism. It covers diverse areas of the Jewish world and civilization, including Jewish history of all eras, culture, holidays, language, scripture, and religious teachings...
. - Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain, such as an encyclopaedia of medicine, philosophy, or law. Works vary in the breadth of material and the depth of discussion, depending on the target audienceTarget audienceIn marketing and advertising, a target audience, is a specific group of people within the target market at which the marketing message is aimed .....
. (For example, the Medical encyclopaedia produced by A.D.A.M., Inc. for the U.S. National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of HealthThe National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
.) - Some systematic method of organization is essential to making an encyclopaedia usable as a work of reference. There have historically been two main methods of organizing printed encyclopaedias: the alphabetical method (consisting of a number of separate articles, organised in alphabetical order), or organization by hierarchicalHierarchyA hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
categories. The former method is today the most common by far, 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 previously unimaginable capabilities for search, indexing and cross reference. The epigraph from HoraceHoraceQuintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
on the title page of the 18th century Encyclopédie suggests the importance of the structure of an encyclopaedia: "What grace may be added to commonplace matters by the power of order and connection." - As modern multimedia and the information age have evolved, they have had an ever-increasing effect on the collection, verification, summation, and presentation of information of all kinds. Projects such as Everything2Everything2Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
, EncartaEncartaMicrosoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
, h2g2H2g2h2g2 is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the science fiction comedy series...
, and WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
are examples of new forms of the encyclopaedia as information retrieval becomes simpler.
Some works entitled "dictionaries" are actually similar to encyclopaedias, especially those concerned with a particular field (such as the Dictionary of the Middle Ages
Dictionary of the Middle Ages
The Dictionary of the Middle Ages is a 13-volume encyclopedia of the Middle Ages published by the American Council of Learned Societies between 1982 and 1989. It was first conceived and started in 1975 with American medieval historian Joseph Strayer of Princeton University as editor-in-chief...
, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships is the official reference work for the basic facts about ships used by the United States Navy...
, and Black's Law Dictionary
Black's Law Dictionary
Black's Law Dictionary is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. It was founded by Henry Campbell Black. It is the reference of choice for definitions in legal briefs and court opinions and has been cited as a secondary legal authority in many U.S...
). The Macquarie Dictionary
Macquarie Dictionary
The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English. It also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics...
, Australia's national dictionary, became an encyclopedic dictionary
Encyclopedic dictionary
An encyclopedic dictionary typically includes a large number of short listings, arranged alphabetically, and discussing a wide range of topics. Encyclopedic dictionaries can be general, containing articles on topics in many different fields; or they can specialize in a particular field...
after its first edition in recognition of the use of proper nouns in common communication, and the words derived from such proper nouns.
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. There are differences in content as well. Generally speaking, dictionaries provide linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
information about words themselves, while encyclopedias focus more on the thing for which those words stand. 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.
In practice, however, the distinction is not concrete, as there is no clear-cut difference between factual, "encyclopedic" information and linguistic information such as appears in dictionaries. Thus encyclopedias may contain material that is also found in dictionaries, and vice versa. In particular, dictionary entries often contain factual information about the thing named by the word.
Etymology
The word "encyclopaedia" comes from the Pseudo- Classical GreekAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, transliterated "enkyklios paideia"; "enkyklios" (ἐγκύκλιος), meaning "circular, recurrent, required regularly, general" + "paideia" (παιδεία), meaning "education". Together, the phrase literally translates as "common knowledge" or "general knowledge". Copyists of Latin manuscripts took this phrase to be a single Greek word, "enkuklopaedia", with the same meaning, and this spurious Greek word became the New Latin word "encyclopaedia", which in turn came into English. Though the notion of a compendium of knowledge dates back thousands of years, the term was first used in the title of a book in 1541 by Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius, Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
, 1541). The word encyclopaedia was first used as a noun in the title of his book by the Croatian encyclopedist Pavao Skalić in his Encyclopaedia seu orbis disciplinarum tam sacrarum quam prophanarum epistemon (Encyclopaedia, or Knowledge of the World of Disciplines, Basel, 1559). One of the oldest vernacular uses was by François Rabelais
François Rabelais
François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
in his Pantagruel in 1532.
Several encyclopaedias have names that include the suffix -p(a)edia, e.g., Banglapedia
Banglapedia
Banglapedia, or the National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, is the first Bangladeshi encyclopedia. It is available in print, CD-ROM format and online, in both Bangla and English. The print version comprises ten 500-page volumes...
(on matters relevant for Bengal).
In British usage, the spellings encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are both current. Although the latter spelling is considered more "proper" by British speakers, the former is becoming increasingly common in British English, in part due to the spread of American English. In American usage, only the former is commonly used. The spelling encyclopædia—with the æ
Æ
Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic...
ligature
Ligature (typography)
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes are joined as a single glyph. Ligatures usually replace consecutive characters sharing common components and are part of a more general class of glyphs called "contextual forms", where the specific shape of a letter depends on...
—was frequently used in the 19th century and is increasingly rare, although it is retained in product titles such as Encyclopædia Britannica and others. The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
(1989) records encyclopædia and encyclopaedia as equal alternatives (in that order), and notes the æ would be obsolete except that it is preserved in works that have Latin titles. Webster's Third New International Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary
Webster's Dictionary refers to the line of dictionaries first developed by Noah Webster in the early 19th century, and also to numerous unrelated dictionaries that added Webster's name just to share his prestige. The term is a genericized trademark in the U.S.A...
(1997–2002) features encyclopedia as the main headword and encyclopaedia as a minor variant. In addition, cyclopedia and cyclopaedia are now rarely-used shortened forms of the word originating in the 17th century.
See also
- Biographical dictionaryBiographical dictionaryBiographical dictionaries – a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information – have been written in many languages. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country...
- Fictitious entryFictitious entryFictitious entries, also known as fake entries, Mountweazels, ghost word and nihil articles, are deliberately incorrect entries or articles in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. Entries in reference works normally originate from a reliable external source,...
- History of science and technologyHistory of science and technologyThe history of science and technology is a field of history which examines how humanity's understanding of the natural world and ability to manipulate it have changed over the centuries...
- LexicographyLexicographyLexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
- LexiconLexiconIn linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
- Library scienceLibrary scienceLibrary science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
- List of encyclopedias
- ThesaurusThesaurusA thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning , in contrast to a dictionary, which contains definitions and pronunciations...
- WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
External links
- Hindupedia, encyclopedia of Hindu Dharma
- CNET's encyclopedia meta-search (includes Wikipedia)
- Encyclopaedia and Hypertext
- Internet Accuracy Project – Biographical errors in encyclopedias and almanacs
- Encyclopedia – Diderot's article on the Encyclopedia from the original EncyclopédieEncyclopédieEncyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers was a general encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1772, with later supplements, revised editions, and translations. It was edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert...
. - What makes a scholarly encyclopedia?
- De expetendis et fugiendis rebus – First Renaissance encyclopedia
- Science Dictionary – Online Comprehensive Science Encyclopedia
- Errors and inconsistencies in several printed reference books and encyclopedias
- Digital encyclopedias put the world at your fingertips – CNETCNETCNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...
article - Encyclopedias online University of Wisconsin – Stout listing by category
- Chambers' Cyclopaedia, 1728, with the 1753 supplement
- Encyclopædia Americana, 1851, Francis LieberFrancis LieberFrancis Lieber , known as Franz Lieber in Germany, was a German-American jurist, gymnast and political philosopher. He edited an Encyclopaedia Americana...
ed. (Boston: Mussey & Co.) at the University of Michigan Making of America site - Encyclopædia Britannica, articles and illustrations from 9th ed., 1875–89, and 10th ed., 1902–03.
- Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911, at the LoveToKnow site.
- Encyclopedia Sites list
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