World Book Encyclopedia

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World Book Encyclopedia

Published since 1917, the World Book Encyclopedia is a general reference work. The encyclopedia deliberately uses nontechnical language and abundant graphics to make it especially accessible to students and general readers without sacrificing depth and accuracy. The editors of the first edition emphasized the use of "everyday, simple language" in the eight-volume set.

In 1919, World Book began the practice of printing annual revisions of its encyclopedia, which has been followed every year since except for 1920, 1924, and 1932. World Book's first major revision took place in 1929, when the set was expanded to thirteen volumes. In 1931, World Book adopted the unit-letter system of arrangement, in which each volume was a different-sized book that contained all the entries for one or more letters of the alphabet. The set was expanded to nineteen volumes in 1933, to twenty volumes in 1960, and to twenty-two volumes in 1972. The final volume in the set is a research guide and an index.

World Book has traditionally worked with educators in an attempt to keep its product in line with current teaching practices. In 1936, it created an editorial advisory board of distinguished educators and established a curriculum-analysis program to ensure that the encyclopedia would be especially useful to its student readers. In 1955, World Book launched a classroom research program designed to monitor exactly which subjects typical students were looking up in the reference work.

World Book entered the digital age in 1990 with the publication of Information Finder, its first CD-ROM encyclopedia, which included the full text of both the encyclopedia and a dictionary. In 1996, World Book partnered with IBM to produce a line of electronic reference works and learning products, and with Tiger Electronics to create the World Book Learning Center, an electronic learning aid. World Book Online was launched in 1998, with an interactive Web site that delivers articles, maps, pictures, sounds, and video to registered subscribers.

World Book has also created other reference products, including Childcraft, a resource library for preschool and elementary-school children, first published in 1934, the World Book Dictionary (1963), the World Book Atlas (1964), Early World of Learning (1987), plus annual volumes about science, health, and medicine. The World Book Student Discovery Encyclopedia, an introductory general reference set, appeared in 1999.

—Edward Moran