Encyclopedia

“ We of the Twentieth Century are a people of information and encyclopedias rather than of literature, so that we shall surely appreciate one important specimen of the prose writing of the Thirteenth Century since it comprises the first modern encyclopedia. ”

“ At the same time the enormous activity of the authors of the Encyclopedia began to turn popular attention towards physical rather than towards mental science, and to the research of material rather than of moral truth. ”

“ Nearly 20 years on, it is time to revisit the idea of organizing the world’s knowledge. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, has become the fifth most visited site on the Web, with nearly half a billion visitors per month. ”

“ The quality of the entries and the breadth of coverage—geographic, chronological, and topical—make Encyclopedia of Life Writing an essential guide to the field.
Guides to Scholarship and Criticism There is no adequate bibliography of scholarship on the theory and practice of biography and autobiography. Given the interest in life writing, such a bibliography is a major desideratum. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Middle Ages furnish us with many examples of the popularization of science, of the writing of compendia of various kinds, of the gathering of information to save others the trouble, and, above all, of the making of what, in the modern time, we would call encyclopedias. Handbooks of various kinds were issued, manuals for students and specialists, and many men of broad scholarship in their time devoted themselves to the task of making the acquisition of knowledge easy for others. This was true not only for history and philosophy and literature, but also for science. ”

“ The plan of the Encyclopedia is excellent, adapted to the wants of the American people, and suited to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge. As a collateral aid in a methodical course of study, and a work of reference in the daily reading, which enters so largely into the habits of our countrymen, it will, no doubt, prove of great utility. ”

“ Although needing a firmer editorial hand, the better entries are useful entry points into the study of science and literature and thus make Encyclopedia of Literature and Science a useful resource in this emerging field. ”

“ The most thorough, erudite, and authoritative of the numerous poetry encyclopedias, New Princeton Encyclopedia is an essential companion for serious readers and scholars and—as one of the very finest examples of its kind—a model for similar, much needed encyclopedias of drama and fiction. ”

“ A wide-ranging encyclopedia, with more than 5,000 entries on authors and other persons, works, literary terms, characters, movements and groups, awards, organizations, periodicals, historical and cultural events, foreign writers, and a host of other topics related to American literature. ”

“ The encyclopedia, used casually just as a reference, would foster continuing education by providing an attractive, free, interlinked resource that would encourage people to learn and keep learning. A truly deep and broad codification of human knowledge, rendered in hypertext, would make self-study considerably easier than it is now. As supplementary readings for traditional education, the encyclopedia's articles would provide a particularly clear, as well as unbiased, second view of their subjects. ”

“ Less comprehensive than the French book and much richer than [128] the English one, it is a meritorious compendium of currently useful bibliographies in all fields. The authors list bibliographies, library catalogues, biographical and biobibliographical handbooks, general and specialized encyclopedias, and treatises of various sorts that contain bibliographical information. Historical and descriptive remarks that are often very instructive introduce the chapters and sections and critical comments usually are appended to the titles cited. ”

“ Entries are organized by type of resource or topic, with chapters on general bibliographies, abstracts and indexes, review journals, periodicals, general dictionaries and encyclopedias, general Internet resources, biographical works, history, primary sources in translation, geography, art and archaeology, language, general works on literature, genres, Greek authors, Latin authors, philosophy, religion and mythology, related disciplines, scholarly societies, research centers, and directories. ”

“ While the bulk of the entries (which inconsistently conclude with suggestions for further reading) are for individuals, topics not usually encountered in literary encyclopedias are also given their due, such as archives, book history, editors and editing, libraries, and publishing industry. Concludes with a chronology and three indexes: contributors; authors; persons and subjects not accorded separate entries. ”

“ For example, there are numerous databases dedicated to primary source materials, such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and there are specialized online encyclopedias, such as the Grove Dictionary of Music, and there are specialized databases that bring together secondary and primary sources, such as the Victorian Popular Culture collection. The riches are endless and a good librarian can help you find what is appropriate for the article on which you are working. ”

“ The Editors of Encyclopedias are not usually reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The works, of which they have the management, contain a great deal of knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. ”

“ It is the only encyclopedia issued in convenient-sized volumes. Ninety per cent. of the encyclopedias in the homes to-day are rarely used; the great weight and cumbersome size of the volumes are responsible for their lack of use. ”

“ The men of the Middle Ages, however, were much better observers as a rule, and used much more critical judgment, according to their lights, than we have given them credit for. Often the information that they have to convey is not only valuable, but well digested, thoroughly practical, and sometimes a marvellous anticipation of some of our most modern thoughts. There is one of these encyclopedias which, because it was written in my favorite thirteenth century, I have read with some care. It is simply a development of the work of preceding clerical encyclopedists, and often refers to them. ”

“ No, but by those who in any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters at all. Encyclopedias are the growth of the last hundred years; not because those who were formerly students of higher learning have descended, but because those who were below encyclopaedias have ascended. ”

“ Guides to Reference Works Guides to reference works identify and (in the better ones) evaluate the handbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies of bibliographies, national bibliographies, surveys of research, bibliographic databases, review indexes, and other resources—print and electronic—important to research within a discipline. They are the essential first sources a scholar consults when planning how to approach a research problem. ”

“ THE word encyclopædia was first used by the Greeks, not for a book, but for a system of instruction in the whole circle of learning. Knowledge in their time was still so limited in extent that it could be thought of as taught by one man and covered in a single educational curriculum. ”

“ Finally, the encyclopedia could be used to represent the cutting edge of research and thereby assist in codifying and reporting on new research. While this has more to do with research than education (except graduate education) , it is worth mentioning in this context that a superlatively huge, publicly-editable, and free encyclopedia could become a sort of hub of scholarship, with summaries of and links to articles on cutting-edge topics. Online encyclopedias are not paper--they can be expanded indefinitely. ”

“ A complete encyclopedia of the sort described above would greatly aid such self-education projects--in ways that the Internet at present, as well as traditional (paper) libraries, do not. Self-study, for most people anyway, is all about pursuing knowledge haphazardly--at will, not bound by pre-set curricula and schedules. A project like Wikipedia is obviously, to anyone familiar with it, appealing to those with roaming interests. ”

“ Imagine, if you will, that the year is 2020, and the free, open content encyclopedias, nupedia.com">Nupedia and Wikipedia, have successfully weathered the challenging vicissitudes of young, ambitious Internet projects. Imagine that Nupedians and Wikipedians have created and edited to a brilliant luster many hundreds of thousands of high-quality articles, having managed to attract tens of thousands of qualified contributors, deal with many and various kinds of controversy, and establish and maintain a good reputation. ”

“ Some of the most eminent men of letters in France took part in the French work, forming a body that came to be known as the Encyclopedists—a title which in its later acceptation signified enunciators of bold and subversive modes of thought. ”

“ A general dictionary of authors, works, terms, groups and organizations, movements, concepts, literary characters, and historical and mythological figures from all periods and a variety of literatures. The third and fourth editions are indexed in Biography and Genealogy Master Index (J565) . Earlier editions remain useful for entries omitted in the fifth edition. For a history of the work, see Gary L. Ferguson, “The Domain of Learning and Imagination: William Rose Benét and The Reader’s Encyclopedia,” Reference Services Review 18.1 (1990) : 31–37. ”

“ Councilman has prepared articles on physical education, biology, and eugenics. All the statistical matter has been brought up to the latest possible date, so that, in respect to correspondence to the facts as they are at the present moment, the Encyclopædia can claim to be the most complete work of reference of its sort in existence.
The nature and amount of knowledge with which a man can get through life has varied enormously according to time and circumstances. ”

“ Here is an offer which brings all the advantages that The Catholic University can at present afford and more right into our own homes. The Catholic Encyclopedia is a veritable Catholic Home University. It has been truly styled "a university in print". Few, if any, of our membership, are in a position to take advantage of the Catholic University foundation; scarcely one is unable to avail himself of an offer, which brings to every Catholic home the best the University can give. ”

“ By THE ENCYCLOPEDIA PRESS, INC.
The articles in this work have been written specially for The Catholic Encyclopedia and are protected by copyright. All rights, including the right of translation and reproduction, are reserved. ”

“ To get up an article in a Review on any subject of general literature is quite as much as I can do without exposing myself. The object of an Encyclopædia is, I take it, to condense and combine all the facts relating to a subject, and all the theories of any consequence already known or advanced. Now, where the business of such a work ends, is just where I begin, that is, I might perhaps throw in an idle speculation or two of my own, not contained in former accounts of the subject, and which would have very little pretensions to rank as scientific. ”

“ The ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ the ‘English Encyclopædia,’ and the other great digests of human knowledge, in consequence of their high price, are accessible only to a few. In such works no special provision is made for supplying short and comprehensive information regarding individual words, arranged in their alphabetical order, of the kind most likely to be required by the great mass of general readers. ”

“ For more than thirty-five years he has given to it deep and quiet thought for apprehending its full significance; wide travel and exploration of the scenes of the great drama; the most keen, extended, and thorough research for documents and maps in print or manuscript in this country and in Europe, in public archives and in private cabinets; a skilled inquisition for any hidden and secret sources of information, and a most comprehensive range of reading and study in every field of intellectual work which would complete his mental furnishing for his subject. ”

“ On the contrary, works of philosophy and religion that bring their authors high repute and esteem are published every day, which seem to have made a starting-point of the theories of the French philosophers. ”

“ The materials which have served as a foundation for the work have been derived from a great variety of sources. Besides the standard works on special subjects, scientific, literary, or historical, the numerous encyclopædias, dictionaries of the various branches of study, and popular conversations-lexicons, in which the literature of the last quarter of a century is so singularly rich, have been diligently consulted and compared. ”

“ But in critical places we must indicate minutely the sources we follow, and must refer not only to the important books, but to articles in periodical works, and even to original documents, and to transcripts in libraries. The result would amount to an ordinary volume, presenting a conspectus of historical literature, and enumerating all the better books, the newly acquired sources, and the last discoveries. It would exhibit in the clearest light the vast difference between history, original and authentic, and history, antiquated and lower than high-water mark of present learning. ... ”