April 21, 2008
'Encyclopaedia Britannica' Is Now Free to Bloggers
Encyclopaedia Britannica, which apparently fears being nudged into irrelevance by the proliferation of free online reference sources, has started giving bloggers free access to its articles, TechCrunch reports.
Reference sites such as Wikipedia, which are often criticized for their amateur (if zealous) authorship sources, have made the expensive, expert-vetted, hard-bound book set a less popular purchase. (Comscore analysis, also reported on TechCrunch, found that “[f]or every page viewed on Brittanica.com, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia,” or 3.8 billion v. 21 million page views per month).
Under a new program entitled Britannica WebShare, the encyclopedia publisher is allowing “people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers,” to read and link to the encyclopedia’s online articles. The company seems to hope that by offering its services free to Web publishers, links to Britannica articles will proliferate across the Internet and will persuade regular Web surfers to cough up $1,400 for the encyclopedia’s 32-volume set, or perhaps $70 for an annual online subscription. —Catherine Rampell
Posted on Monday April 21, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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“What’s that laugher?” Sir Colin wondered aloud to no one in particular. The entire room sat in nervous silence.
“I say, what is that laughter?”
— S. Britchky Apr 21, 12:50 PM #
The Encyclopedia Britannica print edition is worth every penny of the $1400 I paid for it. Other readers should note that the print edition of the set is marked down each year, to below $1000, near the end of its run, as the next year’s edition approaches publication. I don’t work for Britannica, but in my opinion, every home library should have a set. I’d be lost without it., even though I have full access to the Internet.
— Richard Apr 21, 08:49 PM #
The reason the price is lowered is either because the information is less current or, more likely, as a marketing ploy.
Help us understand, Richard, what you do that would cause you to be “lost without it”.
— Rob Apr 22, 08:16 AM #
It’s a shame that while Britannica seem to be trying to learn a lesson about viral web publicity from the example of Wikipedia (and many other web 2.0 publications), they are clearly failing to learn anything about the value of collaborative editing and the market’s thirst for (and the financial viability of) open access publication.
— Gabriel Apr 22, 09:33 AM #
Wikipedia a standard bearer? God help us! Some of the poor twits who have come to rely on “insta-information” don’t know what they don’t know. And the dumbing down continues.
— Douglas Apr 22, 11:08 AM #
Don’t knock anyone who prefers the printed volumes to an online resource. Having grown up with books (first computer access was 6th grade), I too feel that there is something particularly enjoyable and satisfying about using a book as opposed to a website. I reach for the thesaurus on my shelf before going to thesaurus.com. Plus, you know exactly where to find some things you reference often in a book, whereas the Internet is virtual — you can “bookmark” a page, but that page may change, whereas the book is always familiar. Sure, the most recent information is online, and in some topics I would encourage online research because it changes so quickly. But books are certainly a good starting point, any day.
P.S. And they’re available when the power goes out after, on this coast anyway, hurricanes.
— Heidi Apr 22, 11:56 AM #
Better post some examples before making a comment like that Douglas. Mistakes on Wikipedia are short lived. How long does it take the big B to fix one? I would never call them “dumb”, but then I won’t have to call them anything if they cannot adjust to an improved way of doing business. To Heidi, I love books too. I’m a librarian. But I love books for their content, not their delivery systems.
— mike Apr 22, 12:08 PM #
Why can’t we have the best of both worlds – Britannica free online (with some ads scattered about)?
— Lazarus Apr 22, 06:08 PM #
Cool, this enable knowledge mobilisation or information concierge .
— Hazman Aziz Apr 23, 04:12 AM #
I should also point out that another easy way to find relevant Britannica articles is to subscribe to Google’s Subscribed Link program (http://www.google.com/coop/subscribedlinks/directory/All_categories?start=10) and add EB. Now each time you search on Google, if there is a relevant EB content then it would be on the first page of Google results. – Kunal Sen (Britannica)
— Kunal Sen Apr 23, 10:35 PM #
I’ll take expert information over amateur information any day. That was one of the original purposes of the web, for experts to share their findings. But I agree input is needed from anyone who has contrary information that could be more current, more accurate, etc. Why can’t we all live together?
— Kay Apr 24, 11:04 AM #
Where is the idea that Britannica is primarily in print coming from? Britannica has not been print-only for over a decade. They have been on line with free and subscription services since the early days of the web’s popularity. The content is updated regularly by knowledgable experts without being tied to print cycles. And Lazarus, much of it IS free with ads scattered about. (Do your research please!) Premium service gets rid of the ads, and is worth the modest subscription cost, which varies from daily to yearly. No, I don’t work for them either. But they are the most efficient online source of reliable information I know of. I don’t have to scroll through pages of hits to find what I need and to know it’s accurate.
— MPK Apr 24, 12:07 PM #