Encyclopedia

An album (also spelled encyclopaedia or encyclopædia) is a blazon of advertence work, a abstract captivation a arbitrary of advice from either all branches of ability or a accurate annex of knowledge.1 Encyclopedias are disconnected into accessories or entries, which are usually accessed alphabetically by commodity name.2 Album entries are best and added abundant than those in best dictionaries.2 Generally speaking, clashing concordance entries, which focus on linguistic advice about words, album accessories focus on absolute advice to awning the affair or abstraction for which the commodity name stands.3456

Encyclopedias accept existed for about 2,000 years; the oldest still in existence, Naturalis Historia, was accounting in ca. 77 CE by Pliny the Elder. The avant-garde album acquired out of dictionaries about the 17th century. Historically, some encyclopedias were independent in one volume, but some, such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the world´s added good Enciclopedia accepted ilustrada europeo-americana, became huge multi-volume works. Some avant-garde encyclopedias, such as Wikipedia, are cyberbanking and are generally advisedly available.

The chat encyclopaedia comes from the Koine Greek ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία,7 from Greek ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία,8 transliterated enkyklios paideia, acceptation "general education": enkyklios (ἐγκύκλιος), acceptation "circular, recurrent, appropriate regularly, general"9 + paideia (παιδεία), acceptation "education, appearance of a child".10 but it was bargain to a distinct chat due to an absurdity by rinascimental copyists of Latin manuscripts. Together, the byword actually translates as "complete instruction" or "complete knowledge".

Indeed, the purpose of an album is to aggregate ability broadcast about the globe; to set alternating its accepted arrangement to the men with whom we live, and address it to those who will appear afterwards us, so that the assignment of above-mentioned centuries will not become abortive to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, acceptable added good instructed, will at the aforementioned time become added blameless and happy, and that we should not die after accepting rendered a account to the animal chase in the approaching years to come

Middle Ages

The work De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae ("The wedding of Mercury and Philologia") written by Martianus Capella (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 (trivium and quadrivium), followed by many successive works along the Middle Ages.

The first Christian encyclopedia were the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus (543-560), 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 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 Age was the De universo or De rerum naturis by Rabanus Maurus, written about 830, which was based on Etymologiae.

The most widely diffused encyclopedia at the beginning of High Middle Ages was the Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor.citation needed

Bartholomeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (1240) was the most widely read and quoted encyclopedia in the High Middle Ages13 while Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Majus (1260) was the most ambitious encyclopedia in the late-medieval period at over 3 million words.13

Byzantine encyclopedias were compendia of informations about both Ancient and Byzantine Greece. The first of them was the Bibliotheca written by the patriarch Photius (9th century).

The Suda 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

International development

During the 19th and aboriginal 20th century, abounding abate or beneath developed languages saw their aboriginal encyclopedias, application French, German, and English role models. While encyclopedias in beyond languages, accepting ample markets that could abutment a ample beat staff, aerated out fresh 20-volume works in a few years and fresh editions with abrupt intervals, such advertisement affairs generally spanned a decade or added in abate languages.

The aboriginal ample album in Russian, Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (86 volumes, 1890–1906), was a absolute cooperation with the German Brockhaus.

Without such a academic cooperation, the Swedish Conversations-lexicon (4 volumes, 1821–1826) was a adaptation of Brockhaus 2nd edition. The aboriginal album accounting originally in Swedish was Svenskt konversationslexikon (4 volumes, 1845–1851) by Per Gustaf Berg. A added aggressive activity was Nordisk familjebok, accustomed in 1875 and advised to comprise 6 volumes. But in 1885, back it had appear 8 volumes and gotten alone halfways (A–K), the administrator angry to the government for added funding; encyclopedias had become civic monuments. It was accomplished in 1894 with 18 volumes,20 with two supplement volumes (1896–1899).

The aboriginal above Danish album was Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon (19 volumes, 1893–1911).

In Norway, encyclopedias chase the different history of the Norwegian language, the Bokmål alternative accepting angled off from Danish during the 19th century. Afterwards the civic ability in 1905, administrator Aschehoug (owned by William Martin Nygaard) assassin librarian Haakon Nyhuus to adapt Illustreret norsk konversationsleksikon (6 volumes, 1907–1913), in afterwards editions accepted as Aschehougs konversasjonsleksikon. In the Nynorsk alternative of the language, Norsk Allkunnebok (10 volumes, 1948–1966) was the alone album until the accession of Wikipedia.

The aboriginal above Finnish album was Tietosanakirja (11 volumes, 1909–1922). Inspired by the boyhood accent archetype of Norsk Allkunnebok, a Swedish-language album of Finland was accomplished in 1969 and eventually appear as Uppslagsverket Finland (3 volumes, 1982–1985; 2nd copy in 5 volumes, 2003–2007). With such a baby market, the sales acquirement alone covered the press cost, while editors were paid by endowments. In 2009 the absolute capacity was fabricated accessible online, chargeless of charge.

Already during czarist Russian rule, two editions appeared of the Latvian Konversācijas vārdnīca (2 volumes, 1891–1893; 4 volumes, 1906–1921). The beyond Latviešu konversācijas vārdnīca (21 volumes, A–Tjepolo, 1927–1940) was disconnected by World War II and never completed. Afterwards the war, Latvian emigrants in Sweden appear Latvju enciklopēdija (3 volumes, 1950–1956, with a supplement aggregate in 1962). Soviet authories appear Latvijas PSR mazās enciklopēdijas (3 volumes, 1967–1970) and Latvijas padomju enciklopēdija (10 volumes, 1981–1988).21

Similarly, in the history of Lithuanian encyclopedias, the Lietuviškoji enciklopedija (9 volumes A–J, 1933–1941) was disconnected by World War II and never completed. Lithuanian emigrants in the United States appear Lietuvių enciklopedija (35 volumes, 1953–1966). Soviet authorities appear Mažoji lietuviškoji tarybinė enciklopedija (3 volumes, 1966–1971), Lietuviškoji tarybinė enciklopedija (12 volumes, 1976–1985), and Tarybų Lietuvos enciklopedija (4 volumes, 1985–1988). Aboriginal Turkish album was Kamus-ül-Ulûm ve’l-Maarif accounting by Ali Suvai in 1870 afterwards that Ahmet Rifat Efendi's 7 volumes assignment "Lûgaat-i Tarihiye ve Coğrafiye" (Dictionary of History and Geography) appear in Istanbul at 1881.22

See additionally this account of actual encyclopedias

20th century

Popular and affordable encyclopaedias such as Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopaedia 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.

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 Economics23 series. Encyclopedias of at least one volume in size exist for most if not all academic disciplines, including, typically, such narrow topics such as bioethics and African American history.

By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on CD-ROMs for use with personal computers. Microsoft's Encarta, 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 2009.24

Traditional encyclopedias are written by a number of employed text writers, usually people with an academic degree, and distributed as proprietary content.

Encyclopedias are essentially derivative from what has gone before, and particularly in the 19th century, copyright infringement 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.25

As of 2007, old encyclopedias whose copyright has expired, such as the 1911 edition of Britannica, are also the only free content English encyclopedias released in print form. However, works such as the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which were created in the public domain,citation needed exist as free content encyclopedias in other languages.

Free encyclopedias

The abstraction of a fresh chargeless album began with the Interpedia angle on Usenet in 1993, which categorical an Internet-based online album to which anyone could abide agreeable and that would be advisedly accessible. Early projects in this attitude included Everything2 and Open Site. In 1999, Richard Stallman proposed the GNUPedia, an online album which, agnate to the GNU operating system, would be a "generic" resource. The abstraction was actual agnate to Interpedia, but added in band with Stallman's GNU philosophy.

It was not until Nupedia and after Wikipedia that a abiding chargeless album activity was able to be accustomed on the Internet. The English Wikipedia became the world's better album in 2004 at the 300,000 commodity stage26 and by backward 2005, Wikipedia had produced over two actor accessories in added than 80 languages with agreeable accountant beneath the copyleft GNU Chargeless Documentation License. As of August 2009, Wikipedia had over 3 actor accessories in English and able-bodied over 10 actor accumulated in over 250 languages. Wikipedia currently has 3,816,431 accessories in English. Since 2003, added chargeless encyclopedias like the Chinese-language Baidu Baike and Hudong, as able-bodied as English accent encyclopedias like Citizendium and Knol accept appeared.