Bye Bye Britannica
Editors at Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that 2012 will be the final year hard copy editions will be printed. Major news outlets and social media have heralded the death of Britannica’s print version death to Wikipedia’s popularity. Since 1768, Encyclopaedia Britannica has continued a tradition of providing general knowledge, factual information that is reviewed and checked for accuracy and reliability by a staff of more than 100 fulltime editors.1 Wikipedia, on the other hand, offers results instantly, by a democratic process, where registered users can contribute to articles.
eb.com has a few advantages over Wikipedia, namely built-in citation features for MLA & APA formatting [styles]. In 2005, Nature magazine commissioned a peer reviewed study between the ‘paedias to evaluate the margin of errors between sources. A blind-test determined that from 42 entries reviewed, Wikipedia contained four errors, Britannica contained three inaccuracies.2
So, which is better? Perhaps the answer is to look at multiple sources: Wikipedia, Britannica, books, the Web, and more.
Around 30% of Britannica’s content is available for free on the Web; the other 70% requires a subscription. 3 TPL offers free access to the complete edition, as well as free access to the ad-free Kids edition for elementary students from the logo above.
by The Main Event
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