World Book

World Book Encyclopedia is, according to its publisher in the United States, "the number-one selling print encyclopedia in the world."^* The first edition (1917) contained 8 volumes. New editions have since appeared every year except 1920, 1924, and 1932, with major revisions in 1929 (13 volumes), 1947 (18,000 illustrations), 1960 (20 volumes), and 1988.

World Book, Inc., is a subsidiary of the Scott Fetzer Company, which is in turn a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary.

Overview

Over the years, the World Book has been characterized by its populist design. Unlike other encyclopedias, it has traditionally published in nonuniform volumes sized to match the letters of the alphabet. A letter with many entries might be split across two volumes, and adjacent letters with few entries may share a volume; but, usually, each volume covers a single letter. Its editors lay out major articles distinctively, often starting them on a page of their own, perhaps with a two-column heading. Though not called a "children's" encyclopedia, it is marketed as a "family" encyclopedia for readers above 15 years of age.^* It recognizes that one of the primary uses of general-purpose encyclopedias is children's work on school reports. For instance, every article for a U.S. state has a box giving such information as the official state bird, and, in the 1960s–1980s, many science articles had instructions for science projects. Also, many articles offer suggestions for additional reading.

Alternate editions

In 1961, World Book produced a Braille edition, which filled 145 volumes and nearly 40,000 pages. The project was mainly an effort in goodwill, for there was no expectation of 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.Foster Stockwell, A History of Information Storage and Retrieval (2001) p. 137.

A CD-ROM version of the encyclopedia for Macintosh and Windows computers first appeared in 1990, but didn't have as much impact as the only other CD-ROM encyclopedia available at that time did.

An international version, aimed at English-speakers outside of North America, was also produced in 1992.

Since 1998, in addition to the print and CD-ROM editions of the 22-volume, 13,800-page encyclopedia, World Book also publishes an online version called the World Book Online Reference Center.^* The online version includes 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.

Other World Book products include The World Book Dictionary (1st edition in 1963), an encyclopedia for younger students called The World Book Student Discovery Encyclopedia (since 1999), Childcraft and World Book's Animals of the World.

CD-ROM

World Book Encyclopedia is also published in electronic form for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh. Apple until recently bundled a copy of World Book Encyclopedia with every consumer-level computer sold. This edition of the encyclopedia can be updated online and has a world atlas and several tools for school pupils.

Reputation and public opinion

World Book is widely respected for being reliable and up to date. Every fact included must be corroborated by at least three respected sources—not including other encyclopedias.It is also the most up-to-date encyclopedia sold, with 20% of its pages revised each year.[http://store.worldbook.com/wb/product.asp?sku=15053 It has also been praised for its illustrations and maps, which are extensive and of high quality. Illustrations account for about one third of the layout, and some 80 percent are in color. Its cross-references are very extensive as well, and an exhaustive (more than 150,000 entries) analytical index ensures easy access to the contents of the set.Scott Kennedy, Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sized Libraries (1999) p. 27.

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References