GERMANY:The publisher of the Brockhaus, Germany's illustrious answer to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has announced that it is to cease publication of its print edition after 200 years.
Instead, the company will give away its entire content on the internet for free from April, meaning the current 21st edition of the printed encyclopaedia will be the last.
The company said its "wistful conclusion" marked "the end of an era where the book served as the main medium of enlightenment, political progress and the institution of knowledge".
A spokesman said the company hoped the new online portal would compete with the German version of the open-source lexicon Wikipedia.
Brockhaus insiders said it wasn't Wikipedia alone that forced the move, rather multi-million losses stemming from unsold sets of the 30-volume, 24,000-page encyclopaedia costing at least €2,670.
"The need [ for change] arises out of the two dynamic forces to which knowledge is subjected today," said the company. "The medium of the internet alone is able to shape the tempo, expansion and constantly changing nature of knowledge, and above all play a role in its permanently becoming obsolete." The online Brockhaus will continue to offer paid-for articles written by experts in their field, compared with Wikipedia, which relies on volunteer contributions.
But Brockhaus will need to up its game: in December, Stern magazine found that Wikipedia easily beat the current Brockhaus online encyclopaedia in accuracy and update time.
As if to prove the point, Wikipedia reacted within minutes to the Brockhaus announcement with a 1911 quote from the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "No work of reference has been more useful and successful, or more frequently copied, imitated and translated, than that known as the . . . Brockhaus."
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