Britannica will discontinue the 32-volume printed edition of the encyclopedia when the current inventory is gone. Britannica Online will also be free to access in full for a week, in a bid to showcase its content against Wikipedia, which has been gradually accepted as an accurate and comprehensive source by an increasing number of scholars and academics alike.
Microsoft shuttered its digital multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta, in 2009, and the last trace of it, the online dictionary, closed last year. Encarta, though a digital product, was also made obsolete by Wikipedia’s free availability, constantly updated content and thousands of editors, contributors and volunteers from around the world.
Just like Britannica, which has some 100 full-time editors, encyclopedia makers are finding it increasingly difficult to counter Wikipedia’s rise, even though they are not willing to accept it. “This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google,” Britannica president Jorge Cauz said told the Washington Post. “This has to do with the fact that now Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people.”
Wikipedia’s style of collaboration can lead to inaccurate information though, and this is why the crowd-sourced encyclopedia is being knocked by the likes of Britannica. But there are no recent relevant studies showing that Britannica is more accurate than Wikipedia, besides research in 2005 by the journal Nature that found Wikipedia’s scientific articles had a similar rate of serious errors to Britannica.
Follow Daniel Ionescu and Today @ PCWorld on Twitter