How Up-To-Date Is That Encyclopedia?
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
I’m putting the finishing touches on Reference Books Bulletin’s annual Encyclopedia Update, which is published in the September 15 issue of Booklist. In it , we review the (ever-dwindling) print and online general encyclopedias like Encyclopaedia Britannica and World Book.
Over the years, RBB’s eagle-eyed encyclopedia reviewers have taken publishers to task for not keeping their print encyclopedias up-to-date. We had to keep in mind, of course, that no one could revise an entire print set every year, and even those publishers who generally managed to stay on top of things inevitably missed important events that happened after the encyclopedia went off to the printer. That’s all changed. While we still can’t expect encyclopedias to be updated every day, we can certainly hold online encyclopedias to a higher standard of timeliness than their print counterparts.
Spotchecking current events has always been part of RBB’s encyclopedia review process. There’s a danger in relying too heavily on current events, though. Today I spot checked Michael Jackson’s death and found that not all online encyclopedias pass the timeliness test (Britannica scores highest, with an article that even includes details about the memorial held on July 7). But pick another topic and the results might be different. And however good an encyclopedia may be at capturing the stuff that’s recently been on everyone’s radar, there are plenty of articles that languish in a database for years because they don’t deal with hot topics, and haven’t been included in recent revision cycles.
