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The musty leather-bound volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were once among the world's most used reference books.
Founded in 1768 by two Edinburgh printers, the Encyclopaedia prided itself on securing the world's leading experts to write its entries. Freud wrote the entry on psychoanalysis for the 13th edition in 1926, the same year that Bertrand Russell wrote a piece on the philosophical implications of relativity.
But in the hard economic climate of the late 20th century, Britannica could not survive on sales to libraries alone, and the company tarnished its image with tacky hard-sell campaigns aimed at persuading parents that buying the full set would set their kids up for life. The final indignity came when this quintessentially British institution was sold to Americans.
Now you can buy the whole thing for the price of a night out at the theatre - and, wondrously, carry it about with you. Britannica includes 90,000 articles, or 54 million words, with more than 12,000 pictures and maps and an hour of video and audio in just 2GB of space - that is a tenth of the space on a modest notebook hard disk. This will be taken completely for granted by youngsters who have never known a world without PCs, but to anyone with fond memories of browsing the old volumes, it seems like unsurpassable luxury.
Britannica is not what it was, though. The style has become Americanised, the contributors generally less illustrious, and the perspective has shifted with its move across the Atlantic. This can itself be instructive: the Battle of Waterloo, for example, is usually portrayed this side of the pond as a holding operation in which the British gloriously withstood the entire French army until the Prussians arrived to tip the balance.
The new Britannica has it told that the French army gloriously assailed the British, only to have victory snatched from them by the untimely arrival of the Prussians.
It's curious that nearly two centuries after the event, the close ties the young United States had with revolutionary France still colour American views. But there cannot be a neutral view of history, and youngsters (who will no doubt use this encyclopaedia) may be better for being spared the usual British conceits.
Until recently you could get the full benefit of Encyclopaedia Britannica free on the web. First-level information is still free but to go further you need to pay $50 (£33) a year, or $7.99 a month. The site is a good starting place for research for students of all levels because it provides, in addition to its own material, links to other sources which have been vetted by experts - as opposed to trawled up by dumb search engines.
You might have thought that the web, with its instant access to information, would kill off the encyclopaedia. In fact, the web has given the encyclopaedia a new lease of life as a front end to the global knowledge base. The disc-based Britannica acts well in this capacity: it is more than adequate for primary look-ups, but also provides links to the web edition and other recommended sources. It does not, however, entitle you to a discount on the Britannica online subscription.
Installation from three CDs is fairly painless, giving you the option of a partial install if you don't want to pack everything onto your hard disk. A single-DVD version is also available, and you can download free updates from the web every three months for a year.
You get three main methods of finding information: a search box, an alphabetic listing suitable for browsing, and something called the Knowledge Navigator that takes you through a hierarchy of subjects. Other features include a dictionary, an Atlas, a Timeline going back 10,000 years, and a utility for helping you structure your research.
Many people will be torn between choosing Britannica and Microsoft's Encarta. The latter is slicker, with better graphics and more multimedia content, and will perhaps appeal more to youngsters. But Britannica, with its greater breadth of content, would see them more usefully through university.
System Requirements
Windows 9x, ME, 2000, XP and NT4. Minimum 166MHz Pentium, 64MB to 96MB Ram depending on OS; 140MB hard disk space for minimum install; 2GB for full install
Contact
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Tel: 0800 282 433
Britannica Online: www.britannica.co.uk
See also:
Britannica tries to woo new users with updated search facilities. But what does it offer the serious student? 12 Mar 2002
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