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The Scandal of “Britannica 3”
- Abstract
THE Encyclopedia Britannica is, despite its name, an American institution. For over half a century, it has been published in the United States under American ownership, including that of Sears, Roebuck & Co. In public reputation, the Britannica has no serious rival, and a copy of the current edition is an essential in each of the country’s thousands of public and educational libraries.
The recently-published 15th edition* represents the first thorough reworking of the Britannica since 1929. The decision to overhaul was undertaken, according to the editor, partially on structural grounds. As he explains it in his Preface, the structure of the Britannica had grown visibly more obscure over the years because revision-begun on a yearly basis in 1936-had been carried out with little regard for the original plan of the work.
As a result, the encyclopedia had gradually lost coherent design, and had become a collection of increasingly unrelated articles. The present edition was undertaken, among other reasons, to restore a sense of plan to the Britannica. There is no doubt that it is planned, and with a vengeance. But it is not clear whether the plan is an improvement, or merely an eccentric innovation.
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