Britannica Academic Site Combines New Tools, Sources, Reader Contributions

CHICAGO, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Britannica Digital Learning, a division of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., today announced a new and substantially upgraded research Web site for college and university students and faculty.

Britannica Online Academic Edition combines a new design and a range of new features that together serve the distinctive needs of university researchers. They include tools designed to make it faster and easier for users to get information and to manage their own projects.

The site also allows college students, graduate students and faculty to become Britannica contributors themselves by submitting suggestions and verbatim revisions to articles, as well as entirely new articles on topics not already covered. Users whose submissions are accepted by Britannica editors and published get credit by name.

The site's contents include a collection of databases useful for college work, including journal and magazine articles, complete e-books, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica's World Data Analyst, which contains national statistics on every country, primary-source documents, links to high-quality Web sites, as well as a world atlas, a Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus, substantial multimedia elements and historical timelines.

Users retrieve content from the site with a set of research tools designed both to make it fast and easy to find information and to incorporate it into a project or paper. These include the interactive presentation of the atlas and timelines and features for customizing statistical charts and tables. The site also has a workspace section that enables users to store and manage their work and share it with colleagues.

"The new site makes research easier, more efficient and more enjoyable," said Michael Ross, a senior vice president at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and general manager of Britannica Digital Learning. "But it does more than that. It gives you a place where you can manage your research and an opportunity to shape Britannica itself by sharing your own knowledge."

One of the defining characteristics of the new Britannica, said Ross, is its distinctive editorial approach, which now combines the work of the public with those of experts. At the very time the company is inviting users to submit revisions and new articles, it continues to commission writing from distinguished scholars and world leaders, as it has for two centuries. In the past year alone new contributors have included former U.S. President Bill Clinton; Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner; Columbia University historian Eric Foner, one of the leading experts on post-Civil War Reconstruction; and Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge, a top specialist in autism and related conditions.

The new Britannica site also shows the revision history of each article, indicating who wrote it, the various dates at which it was revised, the nature of each revision, and who made it. It is here that contributions from readers and the public are also noted. This feature provides a level of reporting on editorial process that is rare if not unprecedented in reference works.

More information on the site is available in a recent blog post by Ross. Colleges, universities and libraries interested in the new Britannica Online Academic Edition or any other Britannica product can call 800-621-3900 or go to http://info.eb.com/.

About Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. is a leader in education publishing whose products can be found in many media, from the Internet to wireless devices to books. A pioneer in electronic publishing since the early 1980s, the company markets a variety of encyclopedias and other reference works, curriculum products for schools, language-study courses and other learning products, many of which are available online at http://store.britannica.com. Britannica is also active on Twitter and Facebook. The company makes its headquarters in Chicago.

SOURCE Encyclopaedia Britannica