Encyclopedia Britannica

[Jakub Roth Maly z Tulechova]

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From: mlbarrow at MIT.EDU (Michael L. Barrow)
Subject: Internet Letter story on Encyclopedia B.
Sender: owner-isig at SUNSHINE.mit.edu

>From: jayne levin <helen at access.digex.net>
>Subject: Internet Letter story on Encyclopedia B.
>To: com-priv <com-priv at psi.com>
>
>
>Some of you suggested I include The Internet Letter story on Encyclopedia
>Britannica going on-line, so here it is.
>
>jayne
>
>Jayne Levin                                           Net Week Inc.
>Editor                                  220 National Press Building
>The Internet Letter                     Washington, D.C. 20045  USA
>+1 202 638 6020                                Fax: +1 202 638 6019
>
>
>                 T H E   I N T E R N E T   L E T T E R
>
>      On Corporate Users, Internetworking and Information Services
>========================================================================
>Vol. 1, No. 4          A Net Week Inc. Publication          Jan. 1, 1994
>(c) 1994
>
>004) Encyclopedia Britannica to Go On-line in '94
>
>     It's 225 years old, conservative and reliable. And in 1994 the
>Encyclopedia Britannica is going on-line.
>    Although no formal announcement is expected until spring, current
>plans call for an electronic version of the encyclopedia to be available
>in the fall on a subscription basis to colleges and universities, where it
>can be accessed by Internet users.
>    The digital encyclopedia is going into beta testing at the University
>of California at San Diego this month, said Joseph Esposito, president of
>Encyclopedia Britannica of North America.
>    "It's going to take a little bit of time before it's all done, which
>is why we've given ourselves plenty of lead time," he said.
>    The on-line version will be text only--about 44 million words--and
>will not include the 23,000 illustrations found in the printed version of
>the Encyclopedia Britannica (EB). The encyclopedia has been in digital
>form for 20 years for the company's internal use, but the new plans mark
>the first time the full reference work will be available to outsiders via
>computer.
>    The company has "no plans for distribution beyond the academic
>community at this time," Esposito said. As for access by individual
>Internet users, Esposito said, "Our research suggests that a very large
>proportion of Internet users do in fact have university affiliations, so
>I'm not sure if this is a major roadblock [for individuals]."
>    The company is taking great care to ensure that both print and digital
>versions of the encyclopedia will be available to regular customers.
>    "We're making available to the people who buy print sets of
>Encyclopedia Britannica coupons that allow them to buy deeply discounted
>versions of any electronic EB when such a product is on the market. So
>we're being very careful to protect our customers, and nobody is going to
>feel that they were surprised by an electronic product," Esposito said.
>    But will there always be a print version of the encyclopedia as well
>as an electronic version? This, said Esposito, is "the billion dollar
>question."
>    "My own view is that the answer to that is yes," he said. "I'm
>inclined to believe that print is going to outlive myself, and perhaps
>outlive my children as well. Part of the reason is that there's simply
>things we can do with the print medium that we cannot do with the digital
>media. And there's also things that we can do with the digital media that
>we cannot do with print. It works both ways."
>    The book version, for example, "lends itself to long, discursive
>articles, of which the encyclopedia has quite a few," he said. "For
>looking up bits of information, the electronic version is superior. For
>reading discursive essays, the print version is superior."
>    Consumers, however, will dictate which medium will be available for
>the encyclopedia, Esposito said.
>    "It's a question of letting the medium find its own way," he said. "So
>I think we're going to have the print for some time to come. Having said
>that, we're not going to make that decision. We're going to let the
>marketplace make that decision for us."
>    The academic community, meanwhile, is eagerly awaiting the electronic
>version of the encyclopedia.
>    "We have been approached now by so many schools for this property, we
>are just amazed," Esposito said. "And the number of schools that want to
>serve as beta-test sites is astonishing...We have been amazed at the
>pent-up demand for an on-line version of EB. It's obviously something
>we're quite grateful to see, and we hope that we will be able to get the
>product just right and that people will be satisfied with it."
>    Unlike many book publishers, Encyclopedia Britannica does not plan to
>license its database.
>   "We've decided that we will do our own internal software development
>and be, in effect, an electronic publisher," Esposito said.
>
>                                                           --Robert
>Shepard

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