INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Stanford Scholars' On-Line Encyclopedia
Features Continually Updated Entries

Philosophers at Stanford University have created what they call the first dynamic encyclopedia, an on-line compendium whose entries change as scholarship advances. A constant stream of new material is added, and opposing authors contribute different perspectives.

To Edward N. Zalta, the project's leader and a consulting professor of philosophy at Stanford, the advantages of such an approach are manifold.

Traditional encyclopedias -- whether in print or on CD-ROM -- cannot keep up with changes in scholarship, Dr. Zalta says. Some encyclopedia publishers print annual supplements that update their content, and all of them release new editions periodically, but both options are costly, especially if the encyclopedias are tailored for narrow audiences.

The most recent encyclopedia for philosophers, for example, is the 1967 Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A new one, from Routledge, is due out next year, but just a few years from now, Dr. Zalta says, it will inevitably be missing references to new research.

So he and his colleagues at the Center for the Study of Language and Information are developing The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which they hope will be a model for on-line encyclopedias in the future. So far, 120 scholars in eight countries have been enlisted to write entries, which are being vetted by 12 editors.

The key to the encyclopedia's dynamism, Dr. Zalta says, is that its authors have direct access to their on-line texts. Using a password and an Internet connection, each author can gain access to the computer files that make up their entries in the encyclopedia and can post changes immediately. A program designed by Dr. Zalta and his assistant, Eric Hammer, automatically alerts editors, via e-mail, that new material needs to be checked. While the new text is awaiting the editors, however, any reader may see it.

The encyclopedia also capitalizes on the unlimited space of the Internet. Authors may compile bibliographies that are more comprehensive than their printed counterparts, and may present readers with more than one perspective on controversial subjects. The editors, for example, are asking writers to submit differing interpretations of quantum mechanics.

But a dynamic encyclopedia also comes with challenges, some of which can be dealt with only by referring to more more-traditional models. "Archiving was a problem," Dr. Zalta says. When scholars cite entries in the work, they need a guarantee that the entries won't change. So the editors have started taking electronic "snapshots" of the text every three months. Scholars are encouraged to refer to those snapshots in citations, just as they would refer to a specific edition of a traditional encyclopedia.

Dr. Zalta says that the encyclopedia, "by its nature, will never be finished," but he does expect to have completed all the planned entries within five years. He and Dr. Hammer are now pitching the project's advantages to the National Endowment for the Humanities, in hopes of getting a grant to finance their work.