Encyclopaedia Americana
 |
|
| Author | Francis Lieber (1800-1872) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | General |
| Published | 1829-33 |
Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic.
The encyclopedia has more than 45,000 articles, most of them more than 500 words and many running to considerable length (the "United States" article is over 300,000 words). The work's coverage of American and Canadian geography and history has been a traditional strength. Written by 6,500 contributors, the Encyclopedia Americana includes over 9,000 bibliographies, 150,000 cross-references, 1,000+ tables, 1,200 maps, and almost 4,500 black-and-white line art and color images. It also has 680 factboxes. Most articles are signed by their contributors.
Long available as a 30-volume print set, the Encyclopedia Americana is now marketed as an online encyclopedia requiring a subscription. In March 2008, Scholastic said that print sales remained good but that the company was still deciding on the future of the print edition. The company did not produce an edition in 2007, a change from its previous approach of releasing a revised print edition each year. The most recent print edition of the Encyclopedia Americana was published in 2006.
The online version of the Encyclopedia Americana, first introduced in 1997, continues to be updated and sold. This work, like the print set from which it is derived, is designed for high school and first-year college students along with public library users. It is available to libraries as one of the options in the Grolier Online reference service, which also includes the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, intended for middle and high school students, and The New Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia for elementary and middle school students. Grolier Online is not available to individual subscribers.
"Francis Lieber (1800-1872), a German political exile, who came to Boston, Massachusetts in 1827, began publication of Encyclopedia Americana in 1829. The 13 volumes of the first edition were completed in 1833, and other editions and printings followed in 1835, 1836, 1847-1848, 1849 and 1858. Lieber's work was based upon and was in no small part a translation of the 7th edition of the well established Konversations-Lexikon of Brockhaus […] The last three editions included a supplementary fourteenth volume.[…] Just before the beginning of the 20th century Richard S. Peale, publisher of various subscription sets […] entered into a cooperative arrangement with Munn and Company, of New York City, publisher of Scientific American, for the production of the Encyclopedia Americana, under their sponsorship. Some of the old material was carried over into the new encyclopedia. The short article method of Brockhaus was continued."
...
Wikipedia