The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to encyclopedias:
An encyclopedia (
American English) or encyclopaedia (
British English) is a
reference work or
compendium providing summaries of
knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into
articles or entries that are arranged
alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are
hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most
dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on
linguistic information about
words, such as their
etymology, meaning,
pronunciation, use, and
grammatical forms.
What type of thing is an encyclopedia?
An encyclopedia can be described as all of the following:
Compendium – concise, yet comprehensive compilation of a body of knowledge. A general encyclopedia can be referred to as a compendium of all human knowledge.
Specialized encyclopedia – an encyclopedia restricted to a specific area of knowledge, field, or academic discipline. An example is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Types of encyclopedias, by media employed
Encyclopedias are distributed in the form of:
Print encyclopedia – encyclopedia in
book form, usually in multiple
volumes. An example is the World Book Encyclopedia.
Nupedia – free content predecessor of Wikipedia, online from 2000 to 2003. Following a peer-review model, it only produced 25 approved articles. That has since been assimilated into Wikipedia.
Martianus Capella (4th and 5th centuries AD) – Latin prose writer of Late Antiquity, from Apuleius—in the Roman province of Africa. He authored the encyclopedic work De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. The work was read, taught, and commented upon throughout the early Middle Ages and shaped European education during the early medieval period and the Carolingian renaissance.
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Mortimer J. Adler (December 28, 1902 – June 28, 2001) – director of editorial planning for the 15th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and designer of the Outline of Knowledge presented in its
Propædia volume.