Wikipedia:Size comparisons
This article compares the size of with other encyclopedias and information collections.
There are many other online databases which combine several encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries and allow users to search all of the works simultaneously. One example is Oxford Reference Online—a database of 221 encyclopedias and encyclopedic dictionaries, offering about 1.4 million articles as of 2011[update], with expansions planned for the future. Another example is Xrefplus, which offers access to 262 encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference books. This all added up to about 2.9 million entries when the database had 225 titles. There also is HighBeam Research and GaleNet. GaleNet—which is likely the largest named so far—offers users the ability to search several encyclopedia databases, including the Biography Resource Center (1,335,000 people), Gale Virtual Reference Library (594 reference books), and the Science Resource Center (51 titles), among others.
The largest paper encyclopedia ever produced is possibly the Yongle Encyclopedia, completed in 1407 in 11,095 books, 370 million Chinese characters. The individual books that made up the encyclopedia were small by modern standards; the work was twelve times the size of the 20 million word French Encyclopédie, giving 240 million words, or 21,600 words per book, although it is unclear if that is how it differs from the Encyclopédie in size. It is also unclear if it is twelve times larger than the original 28-volume version of the Encyclopédie completed in 1772 or the 35-volume version completed in 1780. The Yung-lo ta-tien was a collection of excerpts and entire existing works, rather than an original work. Only two copies were made and all that survives is a small fraction of one copy.
Numbers regarding total characters are based on an estimated average word length of five, plus a space, or six characters per word.
*Classical Chinese is a very compact language. The result is very short in size for the same content.
†It is said that Yongle is larger than Siku, but it is uncertain how they were compared.
‡Kenneth F. Kister, Kister's best encyclopedias: a comparative guide to general and specialized encyclopedias, (1994) p. 450. [Article count is for the 82-volume edition, rather than the 119-volume one.]
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