The is one of Japan's two major encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

s, the other being the Encyclopedia Nipponica

Encyclopedia Nipponica

was published in 1984 from Shogakukan. The first edition of Encyclopedia Nipponica included 25 volumes and was completed in 1989. Encyclopedia Nipponica was intended to further describe Japan and Japanese in depth and at large. After 10 years of preparation, over 130,000 entries and 500,000 indexes...

. The World Encyclopedia is widely held to be the most complete and up-to-date encyclopedia in the Japanese language

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

.

Formats

The Heibonsha World Encyclopedia currently exists in three slightly different editions:

• the World Encyclopedia, originally published in 1988 and based on the Heibonsha Encyclopedia (Heibonsha Dai-hyakka Jiten) published in 1984–1985
• the World Encyclopedia on DVD
  DVD
  A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
  
  
• the Internet
  Internet
  The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
  
  -only Netto de Hyakka (ネットで百科), which was started in 1999

The 1984–1985 Heibonsha Encyclopedia was published in sixteen volumes, while the 1988 World Encyclopedia had thirty-five volumes. The content changed very little between these two editions, but the latter version was published on heavier paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

 and included several additional indexes and supplementary volumes.

The Heibonsha Encyclopedia is no longer being published in a print edition, and is instead being produced in the above-mentioned DVD and Internet formats. A reduced version of this encyclopedia is also available in numerous Japanese electronic dictionaries, and modified access to Netto de Hyakka is available using Japanese cell phones. The content differs only slightly between the various formats. Netto de Hyakka is constantly updated and therefore provides the most current information, but the majority of articles have not been significantly altered from the text edition. The Internet format is text-only and does not include the images that are present in the text and DVD version.

The current version of Netto de hyakka (ネットで百科＠Home) is called the Network Encyclopedia in English, and is provided by Hitachi Systems and Services. Heibonsha no longer provides support for electronic versions of the World Encyclopedia.

Characteristics

All articles in the Heibonsha Encyclopedia are signed by their authors. The encyclopedia does not include a list of reference works used in each article. Articles differ widely in length based on the significance of the topic. The encyclopedia covers a wide variety of topics of both general and specific interest, with particular attention to topics relating to Japan. The 1988 edition features 90,000 entries and includes an index that lists cross-references for approximately 400,000 terms. Beginning with the 1988 edition, the encyclopedia has included an index in Western character sets for more convenient searching of foreign words.