Encyclopedia
An encyclopedia (or encyclopaedia in British spelling) is a comprehensive reference work on a range of subjects (typically arranged in alphabetical order). The range of subjects might be of general interest or limited to a particular field of knowledge.
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Quotes
[edit]- Encyclopædia Britannica was the leading provider of encyclopedias in the English language, but after sales declined rapidly in the early 1990s the company was forced to file for bankruptcy. Many different organizational and market factors contributed to this crisis, such as the diffusion of the PC, the invention of Encarta, the technical challenges of moving text to electronic formats, and the difficulties of inventing a new format while also operating the leading seller of books.
- Shane Greenstein and Michelle Devereux, (2017). "The Crisis at Encyclopædia Britannica". Kellog School of Management Cases: 1–18.
- ... I plowed through Chambers' Encyclopedia relentlessly, beginning with the shortest articles and gradually working my way into the longer ones. The kitchen-midden of irrelevant and incredible information that still burdens me had its origins in those pages, and I almost wore them out acquiring it.
- H. L. Mencken, "Chapter X. Larval Stage of a Bookworm". Happy Days. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2013. ISBN 030783087X.
- Works of reference are extremely useful; but they resemble Virgil's Hell in that they are easy things to get into and very difficult to escape. Take the Encyclopædia. I imagine that my experience with it is universal. I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain until sleep or a visitor comes to haul me out. A man will read things in the Encyclopædia that he would never dream of looking at elsewhere—things in which normally he does not take the faintest interest. One may take up a volume after lunch in order to discover the parentage of Thomas Nashe; but one does not put it down when one has satisfied one's curiosity. One turns over a few pages and becomes absorbed in the career of Napoleon. Thence one drifts to the article on Napier, which sends one to that on Logarithms in another volume ....
- Sir John Collings Squire, "Who's Who". Books in General, Volume 1. 1919. pp. 11–16. (quote from p. 11; essays reprinted from The New Statesman)
