Den Store Danske Encyklopædi
Encyclopedia
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
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....
. The 20 volumes of the encyclopedia were published successively between 1994 and 2001; a one-volume supplement was published in 2002 and two index volumes in 2003. The work comprises 115,000 articles, ranging in size from single-line cross references to the 130-page entry Danmark (Denmark). The articles were written by a staff of about 4,000 academic experts led by editor-in-chief Jørn Lund
Jørn Lund
Jørn Lund is a former Danish cyclist who competed in multiple Summer Olympics. He took part in the men's 100 km team time trial in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games...
. Articles longer than a few dozen lines are signed by their authors. Many articles are illustrated.
The encyclopedia was published by Danmarks Nationalleksikon A/S (Denmark's National Encyclopedia), a subsidiary of Denmark's grand old publishing house Gyldendal
Gyldendal (Denmark)
Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag A/S, in Denmark usually referred to simply as Gyldendal is a Danish publishing house. Founded in 1770 by Søren Gyldendal, it is the oldest and largest publishing house in Denmark, offering a wide selection of books including fiction, non-fiction and...
that was set up for the purpose. The project was inspired by the almost contemporary Swedish Nationalencyklopedin
Nationalencyklopedin
Nationalencyklopedin is the most comprehensive contemporary Swedish language encyclopedia, initiated by a favourable loan from the Government of Sweden of 17 million Swedish kronor in 1980, which was repaid by December 1990...
; it received financial support from the Augustinus Foundation and was backed by a governmental inflation guarantee on pre-paid subscriptions. Eventually about 35,000 copies were sold.
CD version
The text of the paper encyclopedia was also published, but without illustrations, on CD-ROMCD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
in 2004 and for Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
in 2005. In January 2006, it was announced that a full online edition of the encyclopedia was expected to be available in later 2006 on a subscription basis, with the help of a renewed grant from the Augustinus Foundation. In March 2008, the publishing house announced that it failed to get sufficient numbers of subscribers and declared the project a failure.
The CD ROM version of the encyclopedia is likely not to work without an update on never versions of Windows XP/Vista, due to a security fix from Microsoft.
Online version
An online version of the encyclopedia was released February 26, 2009 - free-of-charge, generating revenue displaying ads. The free online version was published using wiki software, opening up for user contributions. The decision to offer it free of charge was criticized by buyers of the DKK 25,000 (approx USD 4,500 (2010)) paper encyclopedia, to whom the publishing house originally had pledged that a reduced-price paper version would never be released. The publishing house insists that all pledges are honored, as the free-of-charge version is web-based, and not a paper encyclopedia.Gyldendal's vision is to create a hybrid between the traditional encyclopedia and user-generated encyclopedias like Wikipedia. While registered users may contribute with content and upload images etc. a professional and long-time editorial staff will maintain oversight over contributions. The status of an article shall be clearly flagged, if it is user-generated content or if it has been approved by the editorial staff. The vision is that the online version shall be the Dane's preferred choice for updated and trustworthy information, maintaining the status of a traditional encyclopedia. Gyldendal seeks to recruit about 1,500 subject matter experts to verify user contributions to the about 161,000 articles - by March 2009 about 1,100 experts had been enrolled. The permanent editorial staff comprises 20 persons.
Copyright
The original articles from Den Store Danske Encyclopædi can be used freely as provided it is not distributed or used commercially.The new articles (made by the users) can be used freely provided the source is referenced using a deep link
Deep linking
On the World Wide Web, deep linking is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a website, instead of that website's main or home page. Such links are called deep links.-Example:...
.
Den Store Danske is covered by the Danish copyright law and it belongs to Gyldendal.