Scott McLemee confesses to loving encyclopedias even though academia generally shuns them.
It might be okay to “look something up” in an encyclopedia or some other reference volume. But read them? For pleasure? The implication that you spend much time doing so would be close to an insult — a kind of academic lèse majesty.
I love them, too. Not surprising, I suppose, given my background as a librarian. Growing up, we always had an old copy of the one-volume Columbia Encyclopedia, now available online, and I consulted it regularly. When was the Spanish-American War? What year did Jane Austen die? What's the defenestration of Prague?
The first encylopedias sought to collect all the world's knowledge, categorize it and make it accessible to others. The most famous of these works is Diderot's Encyclopédie, which is available in English translation here. Have a look at Diderot's Map of the System of Human Knowledge (below). Don't you just love the grandeur--or hubris--of the idea?
The Encyclopedia Britannica continued in that tradition. But Britannica really hit its stride in the 19th Century with entries by Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and James Mill. In the 20th Century contributors included Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Leon Trotsky, Harry Houdini, H.L. Mencken, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Later editions lacked the intellectual firepower of those editions and the encyclopedia languished for a while. Here's a snappy history of Britannica.
More encyclopedia trivia: Mussolini wrote the entry on facism for the Italian Encyclopedia. You can read a translation here.
The encyclopedia is still going strong. And while generalist encyclopedias are still around, most of the newer works are more specialized. (Here's a list of some online encylopedias.) We no longer believe we can take all of knowledge and slap it between two covers. Though A.J. Jacobs read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote a book about it, Know-it-All.
Full disclosure: I have written for an encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of New York City, on topics as weighty as the egg cream, Cosmopolitan magazine and the Happy Land Social Club Fire. You could look it up.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
Nice post - major omission I submit is wikipedia - the collaborative, reader-edited and phenomenal encyclopedia - the encyclopedia of the future, perhaps
Here's the wiki entry for 'Encyclopedia'
2 - Rachel
Thanks. I was going to include Wikipedia but somehow forgot to mention it.
3 - miriam
I have to disagree about Wikipedia. I looked up something I know something about--the aviation pioneer Bessie coleman--and was appalled by the misinformed and badly written piece. I rewrote it, and maybe my rewrite is still there.
A Wikipedia article could be good, it could be bad, but you can't tell and you can't trust it.
4 - Eric Olsen
very cool Rachel, another good one! I love encyclopedias, and also agree wikipedia is highly variable
5 - alienboy
Miriam,
The whole point about Wikipedia is that it is open source and anybody can, and does, contribute. You did, and improved it, so well done.
6 - bhw
But it's completely unreliable. There's no vetting of the content, except by its readers. I could go in there and make something up and nobody knows how long it would stay like that.
7 - Phillip Winn
At any given moment in time, any number of articles in the wikipedia are inaccurate. Over an extended period of time, none of them are. The trick is that we tend to look things up at a given moment in time!
I haven't relied on a single source for factual material since about the fifth grade. Come to think of it, I haven't been allowed to rely on a single source since then, even if that source was the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Errors in Wikipedia tend to be easily identified and easily caught, in my experience. The well-written pieces stand out, and the poorly-written pieces do too.
I just like to hit "random page" and have fun!
8 - Rachel
If you're really researching a topic, an encyclopedia is a good jumping off point--not a final destination. But to satisfy mild curiosity or to look up a date they're great.
9 - Tan Hoang
AS a student, a digital encyclopedia like Wikipedia helps tremendously. But as you get further down the chain of higher education like getting your masters and doctorate, Britannica is still miles ahead in terms of credibility. As things become easier and easier to do with all things digital, we still haven't found a way to authenticate online pages for credibility. I love Wikipedia, but if you're sourcing information for a college research paper, I don't think many professors, at least the ones that I've dealt with, know Wikipedia.
10 - Tan Hoang
Wired! Magazine ran this great article a few months ago about Wikipedia and the dedication of many of top contributors of it. Some spend several hours each day adding content to the site. If only I had such dedication, I might be a better student.