A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — S e p t e m b e r 2 0 0 1

Major Changes Coming to Britannica Online

By James Speed Hensinger

Encyclopædia Britannica is making major changes to Britannica Online. By the end of September, Britannica plans to launch a new, enhanced Britannica Online Educational subscription service. New features are:

An integrated search that pulls results from both Encyclop‘dia Britannica and Britannica Intermediate articles, as well as the Internet Guide and a daily news archive of current events coverage.
Thousands of revised articles and more than 350 new articles.
A new database feature, Britannica Heritage, that explores articles, images and media from past Britannica editions.
The ability to e-mail articles from the encyclopedia to other Britannica Online users.
More than 300,000 related Internet links from Britannica Online articles to other Web resources.
A new video section that allows users to search multimedia and full-motion video on the site (coming in October).
A timeline browse feature for searching historical events (coming in October).

Britannica for Kids, an encyclopedia for students in Grades 4-6, is scheduled to be available in early 2002.

Libraries can subscribe to Britannica Online through BCR at 34.5-cents per FTE per year. In the meantime, Britannica.com, formerly a free consumer-oriented Web site, is now a subscription service. Single-user access is $50 annually and is unavailable through BCR.

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