April 23, 2008...3:10 pm
Wikipedia to be have hard copy in German
Wikipedia, everyone’s favorite encyclopedia to love or hate, will soon be published as a hard copy in German. Wikipedia has approximately 740,000 German language articles and will reduce that number to around 25,000 (or 50,000 depending on which news report you believe) articles for their 1,000 page book. This new book will be sold for 19.95 euros, or about $32. In the second article it did say that someone once calculated that if the English language version were actually printed out in its entirety, it would take 750 volumes to do so. So, as you might guess, they are going to be reducing the number of articles quite substantially, and I would also assume the length of the articles as well.
I wonder if this experiment will work for them. I think that one of the great things about Wikipedia is that it easily links articles to each other with simple hyperlinks. Obviously some of the serendipitousness of reading an article and seeing something else you’re interested in will be lost in this new version of Wikipedia. Another thing I think is interesting about this news is that the book will contain the most popular entries from the German language Wikipedia website. So, in effect it is more of a pop culture snapshot rather than a true encyclopedia. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing though because Wikipedia in and of itself is very pop culture oriented. It is “wide, but shallow” as some have said about it. Where else can you get a lengthy article on the heavy metal umlaut?
On a related note, the Encyclopedia Britannica will now give free access to bloggers and other web publishers if you want to link to their content from your site. All you have to do is register on their website and if they approve of you, you’ll get access to their encyclopedia entries. They say that
This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.
While this may be beneficial for those who are “Web publisher[s]—a blogger, webmaster, or writer,” the Average Joe is not going to be benefitting from this. He or she is going to be going to Wikipedia because it’s free. I guess in their mind, the Average Joe will be clicking links from peoples’ websites and say to themselves, “Oh boy, free access to Britannica!” and quickly shell out $70 to have access to all the other articles not being linked to by one of the web publishers. Umm, maybe I’m missing something here, but I think I’d much rather use Wikipedia. There will probably be a few people who sign up, and I guess a few is better than none, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. But what do I know, I’m just a librarian who sees students use Wikipedia and not Britannica (which we have access to for free in the library) all the time.
2 Comments
April 24, 2008 at 4:00 am
I think the reason they are aiming for 20-50 thousand articles in the book is so that they get the best articles with the highest quality. Some of the wikipedia articles are crapola and it would take a bit of work before they turn into decent articles and then go on to be included in a book.
Anyway, all the best!
May 19, 2008 at 7:37 pm
[...] So what do you think? If Wikipedia has articles that are frozen, archived, and easily accessible, will that make it a more valuable resource? Do you feel that professors/teachers, librarians, administrators, etc. would be more willing to accept its use than they do now? Do you think that this is simply an attempt by Jimmy Wales to make people feel more comfortable with his encyclopedia? i.e., Is this just a publicity stunt or do you think it actually might come to fruition and be useful? Why is it that every time something new happens on Wikipedia it seems the Germans are doing it first? (See this page for reference) [...]
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