Britannica ruled, but now it must change

A PRODUCT of the Scottish Enlightenment, for more than 250 years the Encyclopaedia Britannica has lined the shelves of libraries and homes around the world as a repository of reliable scholarly information.

However, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia, which has been continuously printed since it was first published in Edinburgh in 1768, has fallen victim to the relentless march of technology as future updates of it will now only exist in an online digital version.

The company, now based in America, has said it will keep selling print editions until the current stock of around 4,000 sets runs out.

After that, users will have the option of taking up an annual subscription to the online version of the Britannica, at a cost of £49.95, or a £6.99 monthly fee.

According to Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, the financial cost of producing the physical edition combined with the pressure to keep it up-to-date had brought about the move.

“The print edition became more difficult to maintain and wasn’t the best physical element to deliver the quality of our database and the quality of our editorial,” he said.

Yet even as the publishing industry has created more digital products, it has struggled with financial losses, and Mr Cauz admitted to a “long road to profitability” for many publishers.

“Britannica was one of the first companies to really feel the full impact of technology, maybe 20 years ago, and we have been adapting to it, though it is very difficult at times,” he added.

The Britannica has increasingly embraced digital technology over recent decades.

It published a computer version in 1981 for subscribers to a newspaper and magazine cuttings service, and first appeared on the internet in 1994. That year, the first version of the Britannica on CD-ROM was also published.

Jan Rutherford, deputy MD at Scottish publishers Birlinn, said the move was a “natural progression” for the Britannica: “I can see the opportunities and possibilities for something like an encyclopaedia with an e-edition, because you can give so much extra and update it so quickly. A printed encyclopaedia is out of date before it’s published, whereas with an e-book you can do it very quickly and update as you go.

“I think there will be a certain nostalgia about it [ending]. We all look back with fondness on things we had in our childhood, and certainly something that was important in family life, but it’s probably an natural progression as well.”

The multi-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica was originally produced by Colin Macfarquhar, an Edinburgh printer, and Andrew Bell, an engraver, who decided to create an encyclopedia that would serve the new era of scholarship and enlightenment.

Arranged alphabetically, it would be “compiled upon a new plan in which the different Sciences and Arts are digested into distinct Treatises or Systems,” and its chief virtue was to be, according its editor William Smellie, “utility”.

The first edition of the Britannica was published one section at a time, in “fascicles”, over a three-year period, beginning in 1768.

Over the decades, its scholarly reputation was cemented by contributions from such luminaries as Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Malthus, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.