Internet encyclopedia project
Encyclopedia
An Internet encyclopedia project is a large database of useful information, accessible via the World Wide Web. The idea to build a free encyclopedia
using the Internet
can be traced at least to the 1993 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 it was overtaken by the explosion of the World Wide Web
, the emergence of high-quality search engine
s, and the conversion of existing material.
started to publish the ASCII
text of the Encyclopædia Britannica
, 11th edition (1911), but disagreement about the methods halted the work after the first volume. For trademark reasons this has been published as the Gutenberg Encyclopedia. In 2002, ASCII text of and 48 sounds of music was published on http://1911encyclopedia.org/ by source; a copyright claim was added to the materials, but it probably has no legal validity. Project Gutenberg has restarted work on digitising and proofreading this encyclopedia; as of June 2005 it had not yet been published. Meanwhile, in the face of competition from rivals such as Encarta
, the latest Britannica was digitized by its publishers, and sold first as a CD-ROM and later as an online service. Other digitization projects have made progress in other titles. One example is Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
digitized by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Probably the most important and successful digitization of an encyclopedia was the Bartleby Project
's online adaptation of the Columbia Encyclopedia, tenth Edition, http://www.bartleby.com/65/ in early 2000 and is updated periodically.
newsgroup alt.fan.douglas-adams http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&q=alt.fan.douglas-adams&sa=N&tab=wg 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, 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.
Several online encyclopedias focus on mathematics:
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....
using the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
can be traced at least to the 1993 Interpedia
Interpedia
Interpedia was the name given to the first proposals for an Internet encyclopedia which would allow anyone to contribute by writing articles and submitting them to the central catalog of all Interpedia pages....
proposal; it was planned as an encyclopedia on the Internet to which everyone could contribute materials. The project never left the planning stage and it was overtaken by the explosion of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, the emergence of high-quality search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s, and the conversion of existing material.
Digitization of old content
A key branch of old printed encyclopedias. In January 1995, Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
started to publish the ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
text of the Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
, 11th edition (1911), but disagreement about the methods halted the work after the first volume. For trademark reasons this has been published as the Gutenberg Encyclopedia. In 2002, ASCII text of and 48 sounds of music was published on http://1911encyclopedia.org/ by source; a copyright claim was added to the materials, but it probably has no legal validity. Project Gutenberg has restarted work on digitising and proofreading this encyclopedia; as of June 2005 it had not yet been published. Meanwhile, in the face of competition from rivals such as Encarta
Encarta
Microsoft Encarta was a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation from 1993 to 2009. , the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and...
, the latest Britannica was digitized by its publishers, and sold first as a CD-ROM and later as an online service. Other digitization projects have made progress in other titles. One example is Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
Easton's Bible Dictionary generally refers to the Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, by Matthew George Easton, M.A., D.D. , published in 1897 by Thomas Nelson. Because of its age, it is now a public domain resource. It contains nearly 4,000 entries relating to the Bible, from a 19th...
digitized by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Probably the most important and successful digitization of an encyclopedia was the Bartleby Project
Bartleby.com
Bartleby.com is an electronic text archive, headquartered in New York and named after Herman Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener". It was founded under the name "Project Bartleby" in January 1993 by Steven H. van Leeuwen as a personal, non-profit collection of classic literature on the website...
's online adaptation of the Columbia Encyclopedia, tenth Edition, http://www.bartleby.com/65/ in early 2000 and is updated periodically.
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 UsenetUsenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup alt.fan.douglas-adams http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&safe=off&q=alt.fan.douglas-adams&sa=N&tab=wg started a project to produce a real version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
, a fictional encyclopedia used in the works of Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
. It became known as Project Galactic Guide. Although it originally aimed to contain only real, factual articles, 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
H2g2
h2g2 is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the science fiction comedy series...
, a more official project along similar lines.
Current online encyclopedias
- Baidu BaikeBaidu BaikeBaidu Encyclopedia is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations....
– a Chinese collaborative online encyclopedia hosted by the major Chinese search engine BaiduBaiduBaidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China.... - CitizendiumCitizendiumCitizendium is an English-language wiki-based free encyclopedia project launched by Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia in 2001....
– a project opened in March 2007 by Larry SangerLarry SangerLawrence Mark "Larry" Sanger is an American philosopher, co-founder of Wikipedia, and the founder of Citizendium.... - ConservapediaConservapediaConservapedia is an English-language wiki project written from a self-described American conservative Christian point of view. The website considers itself to be a supporter of "conservative, family-friendly" content...
– a project to create an encyclopedia written from a viewpoint supportive of Conservative ChristianityConservative ChristianityConservative Christianity is a term applied to a number of groups or movements seen as giving priority to traditional Christian beliefs and practices...
and Young Earth creationismYoung Earth creationismYoung Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago... - Enciclopedia LibreEnciclopedia LibreEnciclopedia Libre Universal en Español is a Spanish language wiki encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. It uses the MediaWiki software. It started as a fork of the Spanish Wikipedia.-History:...
– a SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
fork of the Spanish Wikipedia, using wikiWikiA wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
software, released under the GFDLGNU Free Documentation LicenseThe GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
. - Everything2Everything2Everything2, Everything2, or E2 for short is a collaborative Web-based community consisting of a database of interlinked user-submitted written material. E2 is moderated for quality, but has no formal policy on subject matter...
– has a wider range and does not exclusively focus on building an encyclopedia; its contents are not available under a copyleftCopyleftCopyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
license - h2g2H2g2h2g2 is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project engaged in the construction of, in its own words, "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the science fiction comedy series...
– a collection of sometimes humorous encyclopedia articles, based on an idea from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Articles are not freely redistributable. - Hudong – remains to be the largest encyclopedia in the world with 3,142,395 articles. Uses its own HDWiki software.
- Cathopedia / Kathpedia – a Catholic Wiki which relies on the Bible as the guiding principle; German and Italian.
- Metapedia – a white nationalistWhite nationalismWhite nationalism is a political ideology which advocates a racial definition of national identity for white people. White separatism and white supremacism are subgroups within white nationalism. The former seek a separate white nation state, while the latter add ideas from social Darwinism and...
encyclopedia; multiple languages - New World Encyclopedia, sponsored by the Unification ChurchUnification ChurchThe Unification Church is a new religious movement founded by Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon. In 1954, the Unification Church was formally and legally established in Seoul, South Korea, as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity . In 1994, Moon gave the church...
- Open SiteOpen SiteOpen-Site, the Open Encyclopedia Project, is a free internet encyclopedia founded in 2002 by Michael J. Flickinger in an effort to build a free categorized community-built encyclopedia, inspired by the Open Directory Project...
– Internet encyclopedia founded in an effort to build a free categorized community-built encyclopedia, inspired by the Open Directory ProjectOpen Directory ProjectThe Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...
. - OrthodoxWiki – a wiki for Orthodox Christianity; multiple languages
- Project Galactic Guide – inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
, was one of the first encyclopedia projects - ScholarpediaScholarpediaScholarpedia is an English-language online wiki-based encyclopedia that uses the same MediaWiki software as Wikipedia, but has features more commonly associated with open-access online academic journals....
– an English-language encyclopedia written by academics - Te Ara – the online encyclopedia of New Zealand
- Theopedia – an encyclopedia of Biblical Christianity; English and Spanish
- WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
– the largest encyclopedia in English - WikiPilipinasWikiPilipinasWikiPilipinas is an online, free content website which bills itself as a combination "non-academic encyclopedia", web portal, directory and almanac for Philippine-based knowledge. Like Wikipedia, it contains various articles on Philippine-related topics...
– a take on the Wikipedia model from the Philippine point-of-view
Limited scope
- SourceWatchSourceWatchSourceWatch is an internet wiki site that is a collaborative project of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy...
(formerly Disinfopedia) – a project to expose propagandaPropagandaPropaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and paid spin doctors - Laptopspedia – a laptopLaptopA laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s encyclopedia. Contains articles on the subject of technologyTechnologyTechnology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
and laptopLaptopA laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s.
Several online encyclopedias focus on mathematics:
- MathWorldMathWorldMathWorld is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library grant to the University of Illinois at...
— a proprietary system hosted at Wolfram Research. - PlanetMathPlanetMathPlanetMath is a free, collaborative, online mathematics encyclopedia. The emphasis is on rigour, openness, pedagogy, real-time content, interlinked content, and also community of about 24,000 people with various maths interests. Intended to be comprehensive, the project is hosted by the Digital...
— a free Wiki-style mathematical encyclopedia which was originally built to replace MathWorldMathWorldMathWorld is an online mathematics reference work, created and largely written by Eric W. Weisstein. It is sponsored by and licensed to Wolfram Research, Inc. and was partially funded by the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library grant to the University of Illinois at...
, a proprietary system hosted at Wolfram Research which was down for some time due to legal difficulties. Since MathWorld has returned, PlanetMath has still thrived. - The QED Project — was a project to establish a "distributed, computerized repository that rigorously represents all important, established mathematical knowledge."
See also
- Digital libraryDigital libraryA digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks...
- List of encyclopedias
- List of online encyclopedias
- Reference softwareReference softwareReference software is software which emulates and expands upon print reference forms including the dictionary, translation dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus, and atlas. Like print references, reference software can either be general or specific to a domain, and often includes maps and...