The World Book Encyclopedia is an American encyclopedia. Although published online in digital form for a number of years, World Book is currently the only American encyclopedia which also still provides a print edition. The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects.
World Book, Inc. is based in Chicago, Illinois.
World Book also publishes children's non-fiction and picture books under the Bright Connections Media imprint, and educational development and supplemental instructional resources through Incentive Publications by World Book.
History
thumb|World Book Encyclopedia (1990)
World Book was founded in Chicago by publishers J. H. Hansen and John Bellow, who realized that existing encyclopedias were off-putting to readers. In 1915, they enlisted the help of Michael Vincent O'Shea, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin.
The first edition of The World Book Encyclopedia was published (as simply The World Book) in 1917,
In 1945, World Book became the property of Field Enterprises. For the year 1990, Berkshire Hathaway reported that the business of producing the encyclopedia had generated profits of $32 million. But as sales plunged in the 1990s, World Books results were no longer broken out in Berkshire Hathaway financial reports.
In 2009, Funk & Wagnalls was acquired by World Book Encyclopedia; the company's Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia had ceased publication in 1997. Starting in the 2000s, the popularity of World Book declined, which caused the company to focus on its digital content and sales to academic institutions alongside children's trade publications.
As of 2022, the only official sales outlet for the World Book Encyclopedia is the company's website; the official list price is $1,199. A company representative said in 2018 that "thousands" of print sets are still ordered annually, mostly by schools who use them as teaching tools for library research skills; public libraries and homeschooling families are also frequent purchasers.
Production
The first edition of World Book (1917) contained eight volumes. New editions have since appeared every year except 1920, 1924, and 1932, with major revisions in 1929 (13 volumes), 1947 (19 volumes), 1960 (20 volumes), 1971 (22 volumes), and 1988 (new typeface and page design, and some 10,000 new editorial features). In 1972, a Research Guide and Index were added to World Book.
In 1990, World Book first became available electronically through text-only CD-ROMs. This edition had some Mac-only features, including a more intuitive user interface, Sticky Notes sharing via Bonjour technology, a Trivia Challenge game, a collection of editor-approved webcams, Notepad, speech capabilities and "This Day in History", "Media Showcase" and "Librarian" widgets.
Since November 2007, both the Windows and Mac electronic editions of World Book Encyclopedia have been developed and published by Software MacKiev.
Associated publishing projects
Other World Book products include:
- World Book eBooks
- World Book Online
- World Book Reading Club (Book series for ages 10–14+, profiling NASA inventors and their concepts.)
- World Book Year Book (covers previous year's events/history and features updated articles from the encyclopedia)
- World Book's Animals of the World
See also
- Encyclopædia Britannica
- List of online encyclopedias
- Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
References
External links
- World Book Online (Subscription required)
- Eight-volume 1918 edition on HathiTrust (B&W scans)
- Ten-volume 1919 edition on HathiTrust (B&W scans)
- Overview of World Book Encyclopedia (2013 electronic edition) from the Software MacKiev Company