Many worlds in 32 volumes

If you have a problem spelling `Encyclopaedia', then here is the librarian's prescription. No, not the 32 volumes, but an introduction to the man who `edits' the series.

Dr.Dale Hoiberg, Editor and vice- president of Encylopaedia Britannica (EB), is responsible for the revision and maintenance of Britannica's 44-million word content.

He was in town recently for the launch of Britannica's `Quizmaster' series and spoke to Sudhish Kamath about survival, challenges of the new media, Britannica's ever- growing interest in India and strategies to reach out to the country's ``infovores.''

``Internet and new technology have been more of a challenge than a disaster,'' says Dr.Hoiberg. The fact that the print sales of the EB series dropped from 1,00,000 copies in 1992 to 20,000 in 1994, had triggered off apparently false reports that EB would stop publishing its print version.

In fact, through the Internet, Britannica, over the years, has increased its print sales with people ordering their sets online. Dr.Hoiberg believes that it is the content that is the key, and the medium just gets redefined with the technological developments.

``In the last few years, we have been looking at things differently. The Internet has let us do our revisions differently, it has helped us to handle `pages','' he reveals. With the internet and introduction of EB's CD-ROM, users can read more on what they want to know about, through `links' that enable interactivity.

Over the last few years, EB has been working in association with over 7000 experts, including Indians, the likes of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, Dr. Jayant Narlikar, Shubha Mudgal et al. ``Our coverage here is pretty extensive. We have our experts to review all of it, tell us what to add...and all this goes back in our database,'' Dr.Hoiberg explains.

It was only recently that EB brought out a seven volume Students Britannica on India, and five out of those seven volumes came out of EB. Some 12 lakh words from EB freshly written and updated to 20 lakh words that include detailed studies on `Visual Arts of India-2000 years', inter- relationships between `Development of Indian Advertising and Indian Economy', between `Cinema and Indian Economy' and the like.

``We are the largest and credible content providers on South Asia,'' he claims, and coming from Dr. Hoiberg, it sure must be credible. Britannica's latest strategy to come out with the Quizmaster series at Rs.100 a book and hit the mass, wasn't exactly triggered by the quizzing boom, or `Crorepati' and Co.

``We've been working on this for the last one-and-a- half years,'' he says. ``And we would love to create content for the quiz shows here,'' he adds.

Talking of content creation, how safe has all the information compiled by EB been, on the Internet? ``We do monitor, but anyone could just lift information on the net. But a bigger problem is that of pirated CD-ROMs. It's amazing the emails and tips we get from people about our articles found on other sites. We refer them to our legal department,'' Dr.Hoiberg explains. ``We have a very active and busy legal department,'' he adds.

``We do a lot of fact-checking and most of the time, it turns out that we end up checking against our own article listed under a different site,'' he smiles.

Dr.Hoiberg does admit that India is a very important market for the company. ``Not just to distribute, but to gain technology and knowledge as well.''

Britannica's future plans for India include linking database to school curriculum and bringing out its brand variants like `Quizmaster' in different Indian languages.

How about an Yearbook on India? ``Well, you never know,'' he says with a smile.

Dr. Dale Hoiberg

``The Internet has let us do our

revisions differently, it has helped us to handle pages.''

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