The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information

Abstract

A GENERAL notice of fifteen volumes of the dimensions of “The Encyclopaedia Britannica” can, at best, be based only on a process of “browsing” through them, and of turning to a subject here and there as it strikes the mind. In these volumes there is ample scientific material on which to examine two claims that have been put forward on behalf of the work on general grounds. The first is that its use as a work of reference purely, for the discovery of one isolated fact or another, is not its only use, not even its primary use, since for this purpose a reference book of less ample size probably fulfils any demand that the ordinary inquirer is likely to make. Not that “The Encyclopaedia Britannica” fails in this object; the number of its article headings is well known to have been enormously increased in the present edition, every judicious addition of a heading adds to its value as a work of reference simply, while the existence of an index volume, though somewhat elaborating the mechanical process of discovering an isolated fact, eliminates the necessity of exercising imagination in finding information to which no article heading directly points. But beyond this, it is claimed that the work is usable by readers as a library in itself, and, secondly, that the desire to make it thus usable has justified the new editorial policy of making the articles under the broad scientific or other headings, not exhaustive treatises on the whole of each subject, but, wherever possible (it is not always so), comparatively brief notices confined strictly to main lines, and indicating to the reader the further headings to which he may turn if he desires to pursue the subject. Another most important aid in this pursuit has been given, as will presently be seen, as a new feature of the index volume.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information.

Eleventh edition. Vols. xv.—xxix. (Italy”Zymotic Diseases, and index volume.) (Cambridge: University Press, 1911.)