online encyclopedias

[Reeder Norm]

I know we're from a public library so our view may be different, but we
also just did an evaluation of Britannica, Americana, and Grolier.  In
essence there wasn't much to dislike.  The expected strengths of each
that we've all seen from the printed texts were there.  There is a
little more visual stuff in Americana and Grolier than Britannica.  All
sets have Web links, a neat feature not possible in the printed sets.
We found response time (were a suburb of Los Angeles) to be a wash.

Eventually we decided on Americana and Grolier because of both the
students we serve (high school, junior college and some university) and
because of price.  We were able to offer two encyclopedias, long article
form and short article form, for a price less than Britannica.  We liked
the interfaces to both so that didn't really become a break point here.

Britannica's articles just like the print set, are longer and more
scholarly than Americana.  It really depends on who you need to serve.

Norm Reeder
Library Services Manager
Torrance Public Library
3301 Torrance Blvd
Torrance, CA 90503
310-618-5950
reeder.norm at mail.ci.torrance.ca.us
The views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the City
of Torrance

----------
From: 	George Emery[SMTP:emeryg at canisius.edu]
Sent: 	Tuesday, January 27, 1998 1:41 PM
To: 	Multiple recipients of list
Subject: 	Re: online encyclopedias

Just today I created links on our college library web pages to both 
Britannica Online and Grolier Online with Encyclopedia Americana for 
a head to head competition. We have both these trial subscriptions 
until Feb 28 and hopefully we will have enough comments from our 
faculty, staff and users to make comparisons beyond price.

George Emery
Library Systems Coordinator
Canisius College
emeryg at canisius.edu

> Is Britannica the only encyclopedia available online with a site
> license?  Everyone seems to like it pretty well - what are some of its
> disadvantages?  Anybody have another they like better?
> 
> Also, we're thinking about getting a "Reference CD workstation" to 
> handle stand alone CD reference-type titles.  What are people's 
> favorites (not GPO - we've got them on a Gov't Info workstation)?
> 
> Thanks!
> DeAnne Luck
> Electronic Resources Librarian
> Austin Peay State University
> LuckDL at apsu01.apsu.edu
> 
>