Online encyclopedia

An online encyclopedia, also called a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the
internet.[1] The idea to build a free encyclopedia using the Internet can be traced at least to the 1994
Interpedia proposal; it was planned as an encyclopedia on the Internet to which everyone could
contribute materials. The project never left the planning stage and was overtaken by a key branch of old
printed encyclopedias.

Contents
Digitization of old content
Wikisource
Others
Creation of new content
See also
References
External links

Digitization of old content

Wikisource
There are a lot of old encyclopedias and dictionaries of national biographies on Wikisource both in
English and other languages. The completion of these encyclopedias vary and the quality of the content
varies from proofread, to poor quality text with many optical character recognition (OCR) errors.
 Wikisource
Original
Name Language Completion Link Notes
publication
s:de:Allgemeine
Allgemeine Deutsche
de Deutsche
Biographie
Biographie
s:The
Encyclopedia
1906 en
Americana
The Encyclopedia (1906)
Americana s:The
Encyclopedia
1920 en
Americana
(1920)
s:The
The Cyclopædia of Cyclopædia of
1918 en
American Biography American
Biography
s:The American
New American
1897 en Cyclopædia
Cyclopædia
(1879)
s:Appletons'
Appletons' Cyclopædia Cyclopædia of
1900 en
of American Biography American
Biography
s:Encyclopædia
Encyclopædia
1875–1889 en Britannica,
Britannica Ninth Edition
Ninth Edition
Encyclopædia s:1911
Britannica Eleventh 1911 en Encyclopædia
Edition Britannica
Encyclopædia s:1922
Britannica Twelfth 1922 en Encyclopædia
Edition Britannica
Also referred to today
as the Old Catholic
s:Catholic Encyclopedia; The first
Catholic Encyclopedia 1913 en 100%
Encyclopedia volume appeared in
March 1907 and it was
completed in April 1914
s:Dictionary of
Dictionary of Christian Christian
Biography and Biography and
1911 en
Literature to the End of Literature to the
the Sixth Century End of the Sixth
Century
s:Collier's New
Collier's Encyclopedia en Encyclopedia
(1921)
s:Complete
Complete
1880 en Encyclopaedia
Encyclopaedia of Music
of Music
s:de:Neue
Neue Deutsche
de Deutsche
Biographie
Biographie
 Diccionario Geográfico es s:es:Diccionario
de la República de Geográfico de
Chile la República de
Chile
s:Dictionary of
National
1885–1900 en
Biography,
1885–1900
s:Dictionary of
National
Dictionary of National 1901 en Biography,
Biography 1901
supplement
s:Dictionary of
National
1912 en Biography,
1912
supplement
s:Easton's Bible
Easton's Bible
en Dictionary
Dictionary
(1897)
s:fr:Grand
Grand dictionnaire
dictionnaire
universel du XIXe fr
universel du
siècle
XIXe siècle
s:Dictionary of
Dictionary of Greek and Greek and
1890 en
Roman Antiquities Roman
Antiquities
s:Dictionary of
Dictionary of Greek and Greek and
Roman Biography and 1870 en Roman
Mythology Biography and
Mythology
s:Dictionary of
Dictionary of Greek and Greek and
1854 en
Roman Geography Roman
Geography
The Nuttall s:The Nuttall
1907 en 100%
Encyclopædia Encyclopædia
s:The Indian
The Indian Biographical
en Biographical
Dictionary
Dictionary
s:The New
New International
en International
Encyclopedia
Encyclopædia
s:Jewish
Jewish Encyclopedia 1905 en
Encyclopedia

Others
Many encyclopedias are available at the Internet Archive website. Although the original text is viewable
the machine readable text is often poor with many OCR errors.
In January 1995, Project Gutenberg started to publish the ASCII text of the Encyclopædia Britannica,
11th edition (1911), but disagreement about the method halted the work after the first volume. For
trademark reasons this has been published as the Gutenberg Encyclopedia. Project Gutenberg has
restarted work on digitising and proofreading this encyclopedia. Project Gutenberg has published
volumes in alphabetic order the most recent publication is Volume 17 Slice 8: Matter–Mecklenburg
published on 7 April 2013.[2] The latest Britannica was digitized by its publishers, and sold first as a CD-
ROM,[3] and later as an online service.[4]

In 2001, ASCII text of all 28 volumes was published on Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition[5] by
source; a copyright claim was added to the materials included. The website no longer exists.

Other digitization projects have made progress in other titles. One example is Easton's Bible Dictionary
(1897) digitized by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.[6]

A successful digitization of an encyclopedia was the Bartleby Project's online adaptation of the Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition,[7] in early 2000 and is updated periodically.

There are other websites that provide online encyclopedias, some of which are also available on
Wikisource, but which may be more complete than those on Wikisource, or may be different editions (see
List of online encyclopedias).

Creation of new content

Another related branch of activity is the creation of new, free contents on a volunteer basis. In 1991, the
participants of the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.douglas-adams[8] started a project to produce a real
version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fictional encyclopedia used in the works of Douglas
Adams. It became known as Project Galactic Guide. Although it originally aimed to contain only real,
factual articles, the policy was changed to allow and encourage semi-real and unreal articles as well.
Project Galactic Guide contains over 1700 articles, but no new articles have been added since 2000; this
is probably partly due to the founding of h2g2, a more official project along similar lines.

Another early online encyclopedia was called the Global Encyclopedia. In November 1995 a review of it
was presented by James Rettig (Assistant Dean of University Libraries for Reference and Information
Services) College of William and Mary at the 15th Annual Charleston Conference on library acquisitions
and related issues. He said of the Global Encyclopedia:[9]

This is a volunteer effort to compile an encyclopedia and distribute it for free on the World
Wide Web. If you have ever yearned to be the author of an encyclopedia article, yearn no
longer. Take a minute (or even two or three if you are feeling scholarly) to write an article on
a topic of your choosing and [e]mail it off to the unnamed "editors." These editors (to use
that title very loosely) have generated a list of approximately 1,300 topics they want to
include; to date, perhaps a quarter of them have been treated; to date, perhaps a quarter of
them have been treated. ... This so-called encyclopedia gives amateurism a bad name. It is
being compiled without standards or guidelines for article structure, content, or reading
level. It makes no apparent effort to check the qualifications and authority of the volunteer
authors. Its claim that "Submitted articles are fact-checked, corrected for spelling, and then
formatted" is at best an exaggeration.[9]
He then gives several examples of article entries such as Iowa City:

A city of approximately 60,000 people, Iowa City lies in the eastern half of Iowa. It is also
the home of the University of Iowa (http://www.uiowa.edu).[9]

See also
List of online encyclopedias
Digital library
Lists of encyclopedias
Reference software

References
1. Osaemezu Emmanuel, Ogwu (8 December 2017). "Everipedia Set to Become the First
Blockchain Encyclopedia" (https://btcmanager.com/everipedia-set-become-first-blockchain-t
echnology-based-encyclopedia/). BTCManager. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2018
0110234319/https://btcmanager.com/everipedia-set-become-first-blockchain-technology-ba
sed-encyclopedia) from the original on 10 January 2018.
2. Various (7 April 2013), Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Matter" to "Mecklenburg" (ht
tp://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42473), Project Gutenberg
3. Now on DVD — "Store software" (https://store.britannica.com/collections/software).
Britannica Encyclopædia. Retrieved 15 January 2019.
4. "Main page" (https://www.britannica.com/). Britannica Encyclopædia. Retrieved 15 January
2019.
5. "LoveToKnow Classic Encyclopedia" (https://web.archive.org/web/20010927163517/http://1
911encyclopedia.org:80/). Archived from the original (http://1911encyclopedia.org/) on 21
September 2001.
6. "Easton's Bible Dictionary by Easton" (https://web.archive.org/web/20030803070823/http://
www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/). Archived from the original (http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/)
on 2003-08-03. Retrieved 2003-06-18.
7. "Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001" (https://web.archive.org/web/2002020507395
0/http://www.bartleby.com/65/). Archived from the original (http://www.bartleby.com/65/) on
2002-02-05. Retrieved 2002-02-05.
8. "alt.fan.douglas-adams" (https://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8
&safe=off&q=alt.fan.douglas-adams&sa=N&tab=wg). Groups.google.com. Retrieved
2013-09-18.
9. "Firehose>" (https://web.archive.org/web/20050111085445/http://www.swem.wm.edu/fireho
se.html). swem.wm.edu. 11 January 2005. Archived from the original (http://www.swem.wm.
edu/firehose.html) on 11 January 2005. Retrieved 15 January 2019.

External links
Encyclopedias (https://curlie.org/Reference/Encyclopedias/) at Curlie

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Online_encyclopedia&oldid=944012948"

This page was last edited on 5 March 2020, at 05:12 (UTC).

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