:online encyclopedia

File:Platypus article on Vector 2022.png is an example of an online encyclopedia, the content of which is created by volunteer contributors]]

An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, is a digital encyclopedia accessible through the Internet. Some examples include pre-World Wide Web services that offered the Academic American Encyclopedia beginning in 1980,{{Cite journal |last=Roncaglia |first=Gino |date=2021 |title=Encyclopedias and encyclopedism in the era of the Web |url=https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/article/view/375 |journal=JLIS.it |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=69–90 |doi=10.4403/jlis.it-12757}} Encyclopedia.com since 1998, Encarta from 2000 to 2009, Wikipedia since 2001, and Encyclopædia Britannica since 2016.

Digitization of existing content

File:Indri EncyclopediaBritannica 11th Ed. p.501.gif at archive.org]]

In January 1995, Project Gutenberg started to publish the ASCII text of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), but disagreements about the method halted the work after the first volume. For trademark reasons, the text had been published as the Gutenberg Encyclopedia.{{Cite web |date=January 1, 1995 |title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/200/pg200.txt |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231219154643/https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/200/pg200.txt |archive-date=December 19, 2023 |access-date=December 19, 2023 |website=Project Gutenberg}} Since then, Project Gutenberg digitized and proofread the encyclopedia, until the last update in September 2018. Project Gutenberg published volumes in alphabetical order; the most recent publication is Volume 17 Slice 1: "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman", published on August 9, 2013.{{citation |author= |title=Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" |date=9 August 2013 |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43427 |access-date=19 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231219154856/https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43427 |url-status=live |archive-date=19 December 2023}} The latest Britannica was digitized by its publishers, and sold first as a CD-ROM,{{cite web |publisher=Britannica Encyclopædia |url=https://store.britannica.com/collections/software |title=Software |website=The Britannica Store |access-date=15 January 2019 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190115184502/https://store.britannica.com/collections/software|archive-date= 15 January 2019 }} and later as an online service.{{cite web |publisher=Britannica Encyclopædia |url=https://www.britannica.com/ |title=Encyclopedia Britannica {{!}} Britannica |website=britannica.com |access-date=15 January 2019 |archive-date=25 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180125191151/https://www.britannica.com/ |url-status=live }}

In 2001, ASCII text of all 28 volumes was published on Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition{{cite web |url=http://1911encyclopedia.org/ |title=The 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica |website=1911encyclopedia.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010927163517/http://1911encyclopedia.org/ |archive-date=27 September 2001 |access-date=8 August 2005 }} 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.{{cite web |url=http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ |title=Easton's Bible Dictionary by Easton |website=Christian Classics Ethereal Library |access-date=18 June 2003 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030803070823/http://www.ccel.org/e/easton/ebd/ |archive-date=3 August 2003 }}

The Great Russian Encyclopedia, a successor to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, was released online in 2022,{{Cite web |date=2019-11-21 |title=Russian alternative to Wikipedia to be fully launched by summer of 2022, says publisher |url=https://tass.com/society/1091455 |access-date=2023-12-11 |website=tass.com |archive-date=2023-12-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231201171914/https://tass.com/society/1091455 |url-status=live }} but has since been discontinued.

Other websites provide online encyclopedias, some of which are also available on Wikisource or the Internet Archive. However, some may be more complete than others, or may be from different editions.

Online creation of new content

Another early online encyclopedia was called the Global Encyclopedia. In November 1995, James Rettig, Assistant Dean of University Libraries for Reference and Information Services at College of William & Mary, presented an unfavorable review at the 15th Annual Charleston Conference on library acquisitions and related issues. He said of the Global Encyclopedia:{{cite web | title=Putting the Squeeze on the Information Firehose: The Need for 'Neteditors and 'Netreviewers | website=swem.wm.edu | date=11 January 2005 |url=http://www.swem.wm.edu/firehose.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050111085445/http://www.swem.wm.edu/firehose.html | archive-date=11 January 2005 | url-status=dead | access-date=15 January 2020}}

{{blockquote|

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. ... 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.

}}

Examples of article entries included Iowa City:

{{blockquote|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).}}

Other similar encyclopedia projects included the privately-owned Nupedia, created in March 2000 by the dot-com company Bomis, and GNUpedia, a free content project created in January 2001 under the auspices of the Free Software Foundation.{{cite journal |last1=Kock |first1=Ned |author1-link=Ned Kock |last2=Jung |first2=Yusun |last3=Syn |first3=Thant |date=2016 |title=Wikipedia and e-Collaboration Research: Opportunities and Challenges |url=http://cits.tamiu.edu/kock/pubs/journals/2016JournalIJeC_WikipediaEcollaboration/Kock_etal_2016_IJeC_WikipediaEcollaboration.pdf |url-status=live |journal=International Journal of e-Collaboration |publisher=IGI Global |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=1–8 |doi=10.4018/IJeC.2016040101 |issn=1548-3681 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160927001627/https://cits.tamiu.edu/kock/pubs/journals/2016JournalIJeC_WikipediaEcollaboration/Kock_etal_2016_IJeC_WikipediaEcollaboration.pdf |archive-date=27 September 2016}}{{cite book|title=Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia|last=Reagle|first=Joseph Michael|publisher=MIT Press|year=2010|isbn=9780262014472|pages=[https://archive.org/details/goodfaithcol_reag_2010_000_10578531/page/n54 37]–38|url=https://archive.org/details/goodfaithcol_reag_2010_000_10578531|url-access=registration}} Both projects are now defunct.

Wiki-based encyclopedias

Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001 as a subproject of Bomis' Nupedia, Wikipedia is a free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteer contributors, known as Wikipedians, through a model of real-time open collaboration via wiki software. Now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history.{{cite news|date=9 January 2021|title=Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher|url=https://www.economist.com/international/2021/01/09/wikipedia-is-20-and-its-reputation-has-never-been-higher|access-date=25 February 2021|newspaper=The Economist|archive-date=31 December 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221231224550/https://www.economist.com/international/2021/01/09/wikipedia-is-20-and-its-reputation-has-never-been-higher|url-status=live}}

Because of Wikipedia's liberal content licensing policy, content forks of Wikipedia can be created without needing permission. A number of forks of Wikipedia exist, created with a variety of different goals, including those created to further political viewpoints. Major examples include online encyclopedias supporting state ideologies such as the Russian Wikipedia fork Ruviki, China's open-content Wikipedia fork Qiuwen Baike, and Baidu Baike, a mostly locally-created Chinese encyclopedia built partly on Wikipedia content.{{Cite web |last=Cohen |first=Noam |date=July 12, 2023 |title=Russian Wikipedia’s Top Editor Leaves to Launch a Putin-Friendly Clone |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-12/russian-wikipedia-editor-leaves-to-launch-a-putin-friendly-clone |website=Bloomberg UK}}{{Cite news |last=Harrison |first=Stephen |date=2021-10-26 |title=Why Wikipedia Banned Several Chinese Admins |url=https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/wikipedia-mainland-china-admins-banned.html |access-date=2024-05-27 |work=Slate |language=en-US |issn=1091-2339}}{{Cite web |last=Woo |first=Eva |title=Baidu's Censored Answer to Wikipedia |url=http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb20071113_725400.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080318114456/http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb20071113_725400.htm |archive-date=2008-03-18 |access-date=2008-03-18 |website=Businessweek}}

A number of small wiki-based encyclopedias have been created to advocate for niche political or religious goals; these include Conservapedia, RationalWiki, and Citizendium.

References

External links

[https://wanoe.encyclopedia.kyiv.ua The World Atlas of National Online Encyclopedias]

Category:Internet