The World Book Encyclopedia is an American encyclopedia.[1]World Book was first published in 1917. Since 1925, a new edition of the encyclopedia has been published annually.[1] Although published online in digital form for a number of years, World Book is currently the only American encyclopedia which also still provides a print edition.[2] The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects.[3]
World Book, Inc. is based in Chicago, Illinois.[1] According to the company, the latest edition, World Book Encyclopedia 2024, contains more than 14,000 pages distributed along 22 volumes and also contains over 25,000 photographs.[4]
World Book also publishes children's non-fiction and picture books under the Bright Connections Media imprint, and educational development and supplemental instructional resources through Incentive Publications by World Book.
History
World Book Encyclopedia (1990)
World Book was founded in Chicago by publishers J. H. Hansen and John Bellow, who realized that existing encyclopedias were off-putting to readers. In 1915, they enlisted the help of Michael Vincent O'Shea, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin.[5]
The first edition of The World Book Encyclopedia was published (as simply The World Book) in 1917,[1] by the Hanson-Roach-Fowler Company. "As a rule," wrote O'Shea, the founding editor, in the preface of that 1st edition, "encyclopedias are apt to be quite formal and technical. A faithful effort has been made in the World Book to avoid this common defect." The encyclopedia's name would later be shortened to its current name World Book.[1]
In 1919, World Book became the property of W.F. Quarrie & Company. The new owners created an editorial board to help make sure the entries were aligned with what students studied, from kindergarten to high school.[5]
In 1978, World Book was purchased by Scott Fetzer Company,[6] an Ohio conglomerate that left the encyclopedia company in Chicago. That year, the company had a sales force of 60,000 and vastly outsold Encyclopædia Britannica.
In 1985, the Scott Fetzer Company was purchased by Berkshire Hathaway. In the late 1980s, while the World Book sales force had declined, it still had 45,000 door-to-door representatives.[7] For the year 1990, Berkshire Hathaway reported that the business of producing the encyclopedia had generated profits of $32 million. But as sales plunged in the 1990s, World Book's results were no longer broken out in Berkshire Hathaway financial reports.[8]
In 2009, Funk & Wagnalls was acquired by World Book Encyclopedia;[9] the company's Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia had ceased publication in 1997. Starting in the 2000s, the popularity of World Book declined, which caused the company to focus on its digital content and sales to academic institutions alongside children's trade publications.[10]
As of 2022, the only official sales outlet for the World BookEncyclopedia is the company's website; the official list price is $1,199. A company representative said in 2018 that "thousands" of print sets are still ordered annually, mostly by schools who use them as teaching tools for library research skills; public libraries and homeschooling families are also frequent purchasers.[11]
Production
The first edition of World Book (1917) contained eight volumes. New editions have since appeared every year except 1920, 1924, and 1932, with major revisions in 1929 (13 volumes), 1947 (19 volumes), 1960 (20 volumes), 1971 (22 volumes), and 1988 (new typeface and page design, and some 10,000 new editorial features).[12] In 1972, a Research Guide and Index were added to World Book.[6] In 2000, World Book published its Millennium Edition.[6]
Unlike the way most other encyclopedias were printed, World Book has traditionally been published in variously sized volumes, depending on the letter of the alphabet. Although most volumes cover exactly one letter completely, the letters with exceptionally numerous entries ("C" and "S") are divided between two volumes, while adjacent letters with relatively few entries ("J"–"K", "N"–"O", "Q"–"R", "U"–"V", and "W"–"Z") share a volume.
World Book editors lay out major articles distinctly, often starting them on a page of their own, perhaps with a two-column heading. Materials are reviewed and authored by experts. They recognize that one of the primary uses of general-purpose encyclopedias is students' work on school reports. For instance, every article for a U.S. state has a box giving information about such things as the official state bird and tree; each President of the United States gets a very distinctive look with an oversized portrait, a timeline and significant historical events that occurred during that president's administration.
Alternative editions
Braille 1959 World Book Encyclopedia
In 1937, World Book published its first international edition.[6]
In 1962, World Book produced a braille edition, which filled 145 volumes and nearly 40,000 pages. It was the first encyclopedia in braille. The project was mainly an effort in goodwill, for the company did not see its way clear to selling enough copies of the set to cover production costs. Eventually, all sets of the braille edition were donated to several institutions for the blind. In 1964, the company also published a large-print edition.[13]
In 1990, World Book first became available electronically through text-only CD-ROMs.[6] In 1995, the World Book Multimedia Information Finder CD-ROMs were released, which include more than 150,000 index entries, 1,700 tables, 60,000 cross references, 17,000 articles, and 225,000 dictionary entries with hyperlinks to more than 5,000 pictures and 260 maps.[6] The Multimedia Information Finder also features animations, videos, and a graphical timeline.[6]
In 1998, World Book launched its first website.[6] Subsequently, World Book released several digital products while continuing to publish its print edition.[1] The online version includes 23 subscription databases with all of the articles contained in the print set, as well as several thousand additional articles and the contents of every yearbook World Book has published since 1922. Articles are also available in the Spanish language. The online version contains links to current web sites and magazine articles, a news section, and video samples.
In 2008, World Book Student was launched for students and teachers online.[6]
Digital multimedia encyclopedia
World Book Encyclopedia was also published in electronic form for Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X. Electronic editions contained the entire text of the 22-volume World Book Encyclopedia, plus illustrations, video clips, 3D panoramic views, and sounds. The articles bring together a complete story, multimedia content, an article outline, research aids and links to related information. Online updates to articles and a "Month in Brief" time browser are available by subscription.
In 2002, Apple included a bundled copy of the Mac OS X Edition of World Book Encyclopedia when they made OS X the default operating system for all new computers.[14] This edition had some Mac-only features, including a more intuitive user interface, Sticky Notes sharing via Bonjour technology, a Trivia Challenge game, a collection of editor-approved webcams, Notepad, speech capabilities and "This Day in History", "Media Showcase" and "Librarian" widgets.
Since November 2007, both the Windows and Mac electronic editions of World Book Encyclopedia have been developed and published by Software MacKiev.
An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.
Encyclopedia Americana is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first general encyclopedia of any magnitude to be published in North America. With Collier's Encyclopedia and Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana became one of the three major and large English-language general encyclopedias; the three were sometimes collectively called "the ABCs of encyclopedias". Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic.
Webster's Dictionary is any of the US English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by Noah Webster (1758–1843), a US lexicographer, as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's name in his honor. "Webster's" has since become a genericized trademark in the United States for US English dictionaries, and is widely used in dictionary titles.
The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the history, culture, and state of Judaism up to the early 20th century. The encyclopedia's managing editor was Isidore Singer and the editorial board was chaired by Isaac K. Funk and Frank H. Vizetelly.
Funk & Wagnalls was an American publisher known for its reference works, including A Standard Dictionary of the English Language, and the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Encyclopedia.
The Canadian Encyclopedia is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada, with the support of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.
The Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge is a religious encyclopedia. It is based on an earlier German encyclopedia, the Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. Like the Realencyklopädie, it focuses on Christianity from a primarily Protestant point of view. The final edition, titled The New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, was published 1908–14 in 13 volumes, based on the third edition of the Realencyklopädie (1896–1909).
Collier's Encyclopedia is a discontinued general encyclopedia first published in 1949 by P. F. Collier and Son in the United States. With Encyclopedia Americana and Encyclopædia Britannica, Collier's Encyclopedia became one of the three major English-language general encyclopedias. The three were sometimes collectively called "the ABCs". In 1998, Microsoft acquired the right to use Collier's Encyclopedia content from Atlas Editions, which had by then absorbed Collier Newfield. Microsoft incorporated Collier's Encyclopedia's content into its Encarta digital multimedia encyclopedia, which it marketed until 2009.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is the company known for publishing the Encyclopædia Britannica, the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia. The company also owns the American dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster. Originally founded in Edinburgh, Scotland and historically British, the company is now based in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States.
Compton's Encyclopedia and Fact-Index is a home and school encyclopedia first published in 1922 as Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia. The word "Pictured" was removed from the title with the 1968 edition. The encyclopedia is now advertised as Compton's by Britannica.
Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including The Book of Knowledge (1910), The New Book of Knowledge (1966), The New Book of Popular Science (1972), Encyclopedia Americana (1945), Academic American Encyclopedia (1980), and numerous incarnations of a CD-ROM encyclopedia (1986–2003).
The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It publishes a wide range of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. The press is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus.
The New International Encyclopedia was an American encyclopedia first published in 1902 by Dodd, Mead & Co. It descended from the International Cyclopaedia (1884) and was updated in 1906, 1914 and 1926.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia (NCE) is a multi-volume reference work on Roman Catholic history and belief edited by the faculty of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. The NCE was originally published in 1967 by McGraw-Hill in New York City. A second edition, which discarded articles more reminiscent of a general encyclopedia, was published in 2002.
The Encyclopædia Britannica has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in fifteen official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements", consisted of previous editions with added supplements or gone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of the Britannica have been developed, both online and on optical media. Since the early 1930s, the Britannica has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool.
MicrosoftEncarta is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia and search engine published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available online via annual subscription, although later articles could also be viewed for free online with advertisements. By 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive content, timelines, maps, atlases and homework tools.
The Encyclopedia of Chicago is a historical reference work covering Chicago and the entire Chicago metropolitan area published by the University of Chicago Press. Released in October 2004, the work is the result of a ten-year collaboration between the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society. It exists in both a hardcover print edition and an online format, known as the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. The print edition is 1117 pages and includes 1400 entries, 2000 biographical sketches, 250 significant business enterprise descriptions, and hundreds of maps. Initially, the internet edition included 1766 entries, 1000 more images and sources.
The Scott Fetzer Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, is an American diversified manufacturer and marketer of products for the home, family, and industry comprising 33 brands, headquartered in Westlake, Ohio.
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