An encyclopedia is a publication that collects information.
Originating from the Latin word encyclopaedĭa , the notion of encyclopedia refers to a set of knowledge . The most common use of the term refers to the work that compiles information about a certain field of knowledge or general data.
Generally, encyclopedias, which have the purpose of providing universal and objective knowledge , are made up of several volumes . The information is usually organized in alphabetical order or according to thematic divisions.
History of the encyclopedia
The first modern encyclopedias of universal scope were developed in the 18th century . One of the most famous is “L»Encyclopédie” directed by Jean le Rond d»Alembert and Denis Diderot , which was published between 1751 and 1772. It brings together more than 70,000 articles that seek to disseminate the knowledge generated through reason .
In their origins, the objective of contemporary encyclopedias was to facilitate orderly access to objective and reliable information, in an attempt to combat obscurantism through the transmission of scientific knowledge. The practice called obscurantism consists of preventing the dissemination of certain events and knowledge to the population.
Throughout history , obscurantism presented two well-defined traits: it was used to restrict or oppose the dissemination of knowledge to people; Those who had access to the information "obscured" it so that it could not be appreciated in all its splendor, making it vague and imprecise.
Its emergence
One of the theories about the origin of the encyclopedia points to the books published by Marcus Terence Varro , a Roman soldier, official and polygrapher born in the year 116 BC. C. in the city of Rieti, Italy. This tells us that the encyclopedia is around two millennia old; Throughout this time, it has evolved in several aspects, such as its format, its length and the language used for its writing.
The organization of the content of the encyclopedia is one of its fundamental aspects: if it were not divided into topics and each of its parts was not properly registered in an index, reading it would be extremely difficult. Unlike what we can find in a dictionary, the length and depth of each encyclopedic article seeks to satisfy many of the reader's concerns instead of simply providing a short and superficial explanation.
Wikipedia is the most famous virtual encyclopedia.
The best known encyclopedias
Among the best-known encyclopedias today are the Encyclopedia Britannica (born in 1768), the Encyclopedia Larousse (1863) and the Encyclopedia Espasa (1908). With the development of technology , many encyclopedias began to have digital editions, either on the Internet or distributed on CD-ROM .
Totally digital encyclopedias also emerged, without a paper version. One of the most complete is Wikipedia , a website with some 45 million articles available in more than two hundred languages. This encyclopedia has the particularity of being collaborative: the users themselves are the ones who create and edit the content. Despite its undeniable popularity, Wikipedia does not always offer reliable information, precisely because of its collaborative nature.
The case of Encarta
Between 1993 and 2009, Microsoft Corporation published an encyclopedia in digital format called Encarta , which began with an English version and was only translated into Spanish in 1997. By 2008, the Spanish version had more than 43,000 articles, although the Anglo-Saxon one exceeded 62,000. At its time it represented a revolution in the way in which computer users accessed encyclopedic articles , since Encarta combined text with audio, image and video, in addition to various elements interactive, such as maps and timelines.
Although it took advantage of the massification of the Internet, including links to external sites and regular updates to stay up to date, piracy and the heyday of Wikipedia ended its popularity.