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Encarta, multimedia digital encyclopedia produced by Microsoft Corporation (1993–2009). Initially a CD-ROM product, the Encarta brand later expanded to include an Internet-based incarnation and was bundled with other Microsoft products. Learn more about Encarta in this article.
- Richard Pallardy
Dec 21, 2023 · Microsoft had already created a ready-made empire by then and so launched Encarta, which crashed onto the scene out of Seattle like grunge music.
Microsoft Encarta was a staple in school libraries and home computers for much of the late '90s and early 2000s. So why did Microsoft decide to pull the plug?
- Overview
- Encyclopaedic dictionaries
- The modern encyclopaedia
- Children’s encyclopaedias
It is now possible to see, in the past 2,000 years of encyclopaedia production, the existence of a pattern closely related to the changing social needs of each age. The outstanding circumstances that governed the policy and production of encyclopaedias for the first 15 centuries were that comparatively few people were able to read and, stemming partly from this and partly from the cost of materials and workmanship, that copies of any lengthy work were very expensive. Only when printing was introduced into Europe did the cost of production drop by any large amount; this development in turn helped to stimulate the growth of readership. A notable feature at the time of the early printing press was the sudden growth in the popularity of some of the older encyclopaedias as a result of the tendency to ensure a ready market by printing works of which many manuscript copies were in circulation.
During the first 16 centuries of their publication the majority of encyclopaedias comprised great anthologies of the most significant writings on as many subjects as possible. The arrangement of these excerpts was constantly varying according to the individual compiler’s concept of the hierarchies of human knowledge; some of these classification systems were more suitable than others, but none was completely successful in meeting the tastes of the reading public, because there was no general agreement on the essential order of ideas. Although the compiler exercised considerable latitude in choosing items to include in the encyclopaedia, comment was often restricted to a minimum, so that the reader was free to form an opinion of what was offered. In addition, because the compiler selected material from what had already been written, the reader was referred to the past, and, although he or she could enjoy the heritage of the preceding cultures, the reader was not being put in touch with as much of the contemporary world as might have been desired.
About the 10th or 11th century a new type of encyclopaedia began to emerge, probably stimulated by the growing number of language dictionaries that, starting well before printing was used, grew ever more numerous once they could be produced. Many early dictionaries were little more than enlarged glossaries, but from the time of Suidas onward there began to appear a type of dictionary—now called encyclopaedic—that added to the definition and etymology of a word a description of the functions of the thing or idea it named. In some dictionaries, such as those of the Estiennes, a French family of book dealers and printers, this description might in some cases be of considerable length. Thus, the compilers of the new form of encyclopaedia that emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries inevitably thought in terms of arranging their entries in alphabetical order because the dictionaries had already familiarized the reading public with this system.
The last half of the 18th century, by way of the Enlightenment, brought such an upheaval in the human concept of the world that the time was ripe for further experiments in the form of the encyclopaedia. The French encyclopaedists Diderot and d’Alembert and their band of contributors broke no new ground in the physical format and arrangement of the encyclopaedia, but their work inspired the intelligentsia of other nations to produce really good encyclopaedias of their own. It is no coincidence that both the German Brockhaus and the Scottish Britannica appeared with policies so different from all that had gone before that no publisher of any new encyclopaedia could afford to ignore their new patterns. Their formulas were so good that the modern encyclopaedia is simply a vastly improved elaboration of their method of arrangement and organization. The compilers of both encyclopaedias had taken the best ideas from the anthologies and miscellanies of the early period of encyclopaedia making and from the later stage of encyclopaedic dictionaries. Realizing that the reading public would not tolerate the omission of some subjects and the unequal treatment of others, they prepared works in which at least a few lines were devoted to almost every conceivable topic, and for more important subjects a full account was provided, written by an expert, if possible.
The period spanning the 17th and 18th centuries is characterized by the flourishing of the encyclopaedic dictionaries that were pioneered by the Estienne family in France in the 16th century. During these two centuries this form of encyclopaedia reflected two different policies. There was the encyclopaedia, such as those of the Germans Johann Theodor Jablonski and Johann Heinrich Zedler, that paid particular attention to the fields of history and biography. There was also a new form of encyclopaedia—if the exception of the 12th-century De diversis artibus be set aside—that devoted itself to the arts and sciences. The first type can therefore be said to be retrospective in approach, while the arts and sciences encyclopaedia was clearly identifiable with contemporary matters.
None of these divisions is actually clear-cut, for many traditional encyclopaedias continued to be compiled throughout the period, and not all the historical-biographical encyclopaedias ignored the arts and sciences or contemporary people and events. Nevertheless, the issue of Antoine Furetière’s encyclopaedia and the immediate follow-up by Le Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences (1694) by the writer Thomas Corneille (the younger brother of the playwright Pierre Corneille) were sufficient to indicate the growing public interest in a more modern form of encyclopaedia. This indication was confirmed by the successful publication of John Harris’s Lexicon Technicum (1704), which the author described as “an universal English dictionary of arts and sciences: explaining not only the terms of art, but the arts themselves.” It is significant that Harris omitted such subjects as theology, biography, and geography. The Englishman Ephraim Chambers went even further in describing his internationally influential Cyclopaedia (1728) as
an universal dictionary of arts and sciences; containing an explication of the terms, and an account of the things signified thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine, compiled from the best authors.
No century has seen more public discussion of the nature of the encyclopaedia than the 18th; at the same time, there was much uncertainty concerning its ideal contents. The fine Italian encyclopaedia of Gianfrancesco Pivati (the secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Venice), the Nuovo dizionario scientifico e curioso, sacroprofano (1746–51; “New Scientific and Curious, Sacred-Profane Dictionary”), avoided the subject of history, whereas the German writer Philipp Balthasar Sinold von Schütz’s Reales Staats- und Zeitungs-Lexicon (“Lexicon of Government and News”) concentrated on geography, theology, politics, and contemporary history and had to be supplemented by the German economist Paul Jacob Marperger’s Curieuses Natur-, Kunst-, Berg-, Gewerk-, und Handlungslexikon (1712; “Curious Natural, Artistic, Mining, Craft, and Commercial Encyclopaedia”), which covered the sciences, art, and commerce.
The period of the encyclopaedic dictionary was brilliant, but it gradually became apparent that, in abandoning the systematic encyclopaedia of the earlier period in favour of the quick reference dictionary form, quite as much had been lost as had been gained. The comparatively brief entries in the encyclopaedic dictionary had, by accident of the alphabet, fragmented knowledge to such an extent that users received only a disjointed knowledge of the things in which they were interested. Nor had the willful and extremely individualistic effort of the French encyclopaedists Diderot and d’Alembert done more than confuse the issue, for they had bent the principles of encyclopaedia making to their own purposes.
In the 18th century an initial solution to the problem was found by Andrew Bell, Colin Macfarquhar, and William Smellie, three Scotsmen who were responsible for the first edition (1768–71) of Encyclopædia Britannica. Aware of the shortcomings of the Encyclopédie, they devised a new plan. Their encyclopaedia was to include about 45 principal subjects (distinguished by titles printed across the whole page), supported by another 30 lengthy articles, the whole being contained within one alphabetical sequence interspersed with numerous brief entries enhanced by references, where appropriate, to the principal subjects. Some of the principal articles, notably those on medical subjects, extended to more than 100 pages each. The three collaborators had thus incorporated the comprehensive treatment of important subjects accorded by the earliest form of encyclopaedias and had supplemented this with the attraction of the brief informative notices of minor topics that had been the chief feature of the encyclopaedic dictionary. The key to their success was, however, their retention of the single alphabetical sequence.
Meanwhile, Renatus Gotthelf Löbel was planning to compile an encyclopaedia that could supersede Hübner. It was Sinold von Schütz who, in the fourth edition of Hübner, had introduced the word Conversations-Lexikon into the title, and it was Löbel who decided to give it pride of place in his new encyclopaedia. The Konversationslexikon was designed to provide the rapidly growing German bourgeoisie with the background knowledge considered essential for entry into the polite society of the day. When Brockhaus took over Löbel’s bankrupt and incomplete encyclopaedia, he saw the value and appeal of this evocative word and retained it (in various spellings) for many years afterward. Löbel’s and Brockhaus’s solution to the problem of the form of the modern encyclopaedia was not the same as the Britannica’s; it is interesting to note that, whereas the Britannica model has widely prevailed throughout the English-speaking world, Brockhaus has been the model for most of the encyclopaedias prepared in countries in which English is not widely spoken.
Brockhaus, throughout its existence, has faithfully followed a system in which the whole of knowledge has been categorized into very specific topics. These topics are arranged alphabetically, and, under each heading, condensed entries convey the essential information. By ingenious cross-references, entries are linked with other entries under which further information can be found, thus avoiding the inclusion of an index. There is no difficulty in distinguishing encyclopaedias of the Konversationslexikon form from encyclopaedic dictionaries. The former are usually of considerable size (Der grosse Brockhaus, 1928–35, included 200,000 articles by more than 1,000 authors) and possess elaborate cross-reference schemes. Moreover, whenever a really important subject occurs, considerable space is allowed, though the same principle of concentrated text is followed.
Before the 19th century, only Johann Wagenseil had produced an encyclopaedia for children—the Pera Librorum Juvenilium (1695; “Collection of Juvenile Books”). Larousse issued Petite Encyclopédie du jeune âge (“Small Children’s Encyclopaedia”) in 1853, but the next, Encyclopédie Larousse des enfants (“Larousse Encyclopaedia for Children”), did not appear until 1957. The first of the modern children’s encyclopaedias was, however, a long-standing favourite. Prepared by the English writer and editor Arthur Mee, it was called The Children’s Encyclopaedia (1910) in Great Britain and The Book of Knowledge (1912) in the United States. The contents comprised vividly written and profusely illustrated articles; because the system of article arrangement was obscure, much of the success of the work as a reference tool resulted from its splendidly contrived index, which remains a model of its kind. Mee later produced a completely pictorial encyclopaedia, I See All (1928–30), that comprised thousands of small illustrations, each accompanied by only a few words of text. Librarians treasured it for its reference value. In 1917–18 a completely new children’s encyclopaedia was published, The World Book Encyclopedia, which the title page described as “organized knowledge in story and picture.” A success from the start, it issued enlarged editions in quick succession. In 1925 a volume devoted to reading courses and study units was added. Annual supplements were provided from 1922 onward. In 1961 a Braille edition in 145 volumes was issued; most of the illustrations were eliminated in this, but many of the diagrams and graphs were retained. In 1964 a separate 30-volume set in a special large type was published for the use of the partially blind.
World War I put a halt to the idea of issuing a Britannica Junior, and the first edition of such a work was not published until 1934. It was based on Weedon’s Modern Encyclopedia, whose copyright had been bought by Britannica. Renamed Britannica Junior Encyclopædia in 1963 (and revised until 1983), it was specifically designed for children in elementary-school grades. One of its features was its ready-reference index volume, which combined short fact entries with indexing to longer general articles. In 1960 a British Children’s Britannica was issued in London. Prepared under the direction of John Armitage, London editor of Encyclopædia Britannica, its contents were determined largely by material covered in the so-called 11-plus standardized tests given in Britain. A yearbook supplement was added later.
In 1970 a new encyclopaedia, called The Young Children’s Encyclopedia, was issued by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Prepared specifically for children just learning to read and not yet in elementary school, it consisted of 16 volumes, in which all the illustrations were in colour and the accompanying informative text brief. After its original appearance, the set was translated into several languages, including Japanese and Korean.
In 1894 Frank E. Compton sold a U.S. school encyclopaedia, the Students Cyclopedia, from door to door to pay his way through college. This later became the New Students Reference Work, which Compton finally bought. While continuing to publish this, Compton designed a completely new and, for those times, revolutionary work, which first appeared in 1922 as Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia. In due course, the system of continuous revision was introduced, close cooperation with educational and library advisers was fostered, and contributions from well-known authors were encouraged. In 1971 Compton’s, by then published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., and renamed Compton’s Encyclopedia and Fact-Index, introduced Compton’s Young Children’s Precyclopedia (renamed Compton’s Precyclopedia in 1973), based on The Young Children’s Encyclopedia described above. In 1989 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., introduced Compton’s MultiMedia Encyclopedia, the first multimedia CD-ROM encyclopaedia; it contained all the information of the printed set as well as sound and animation.
The purpose of writing a summary of a book is to provide a concise overview of the story and its main elements. Summaries help readers decide if they want to read the full book, assist in studying and reviewing the material, and can be used as a tool for communication and sharing recommendations.
- A book summary is a concise overview of the main ideas, characters, and events in a book.
- Teaching kids how to write book summaries improves their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.
- To identify the main characters of a book, pay attention to those who play significant roles in the story. The setting refers to the time and place...
- To summarize the plot of a book, provide an engaging introduction and summarize the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
- To make your summary engaging, use clear and concise language. Focus on the main ideas and key points of the story.
- A book summary should include the title and author of the book, a brief overview of the main characters and setting, and the genre or category of t...
- Organize your book summary using paragraphs to separate different parts. Use transition words for a smooth flow and follow a logical progression of...
- To edit and revise your book summary, check for grammatical and spelling errors. Ensure clarity and coherence.
- While the book summary should primarily focus on providing an objective overview, you can include a brief personal reflection or opinion at the end.
Encarta 2003 incorporated literature guides and book summaries, foreign language translation dictionaries, a Homework Center and Chart Maker. Encarta 's Visual Browser , available since the 2004 version, presented a user with a list of related topics making them more discoverable.
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Encarta was a digital encyclopedia created by Microsoft and first released in 1993. It was originally available on CD-ROM and was later made available online. Encarta was known for its multimedia content, including images, videos, and animations, as well as its user-friendly interface and interactive features.
