Globalization in information processes and the informatization of society have fundamentally changed the face of book publishing. Computer technologies allow to create a completely new type of publications that have no analogue in the history of printing art. Although at the end of the 20th century statistics show an increase in the purchase of print publications, especially periodicals and fiction, and newspaper and magazine publishing was a thriving industry that profited primarily from the advertisements it placed in its publications, increasingly the problem of the future of traditional printed editions and modern editions of information carriers – CD-ROM, DVD and online editions – is discussed. Practice in developed countries shows that the most suitable CD-ROM, DVD and online publications are electronic encyclopedias, biographical directories, online electronic publications of scientific journals, newsletters, statistical and business information. For centuries, encyclopedias were published as a set of many volumes, until in the early 1980s they began to be published in a new, non-paper format – first using dial-up systems, then CD-ROM and digital video discs (DVDs). , and finally via the Internet. There are two types of electronic encyclopedias – those that have a printed counterpart and those that exist only in electronic form. Search capabilities in the first type of encyclopedias cannot be fully implemented. In the electronic versions of some of them there is a loss of information compared to their printed version (maps, statistical tables, articles). In electronic encyclopedias of the second type, the search possibilities are significantly more diverse (by alphabetical order, by keyword, by thematic section), the texts are provided with hyperlinks, there is the possibility of updating and editing, the user of the encyclopedia can add his own text and etc. The main advantage of electronic encyclopedias is their significantly lower price compared to printed editions. A new stage in the development of electronic encyclopedias is the spread of the DVD format, which allows an incredibly large volume of multimedia information – a combination of text, sound, picture, animation and video – to be recorded on an optical disc.
From the early 1980s, the 21-volume Encyclopedia Americana, published by Grolier, became the first online encyclopedia available. Computer users, dialing the telephone number of the information service, get access to the texts from the encyclopedia database by means of a modem connected to the telephone. In the 1980s encyclopedias began to be published in CD format alongside printed encyclopedias. Encyclopedias in this format are analogous to printed editions, but in addition to texts they contain illustrations and sound. The first such encyclopedia is Academic American Encyclopedia, released in 1985 on CD-ROM by Grolier. This text-only version was supplemented with illustrations in 1990 and with audio and video appendices in 1992 and is known as New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. In 1989, it was released on CD-ROM Compton’s Multimedia Encyclopedia.
In the early 1990s, the president of the Microsoft company, Bill Gates, thought of developing a multimedia encyclopedia on CD-ROM and approached the largest encyclopedia publishers with an offer to buy their editions, but was refused by them. The publishers of American encyclopedias, despite their inherent conservatism, are well aware that their future lies in electronic versions of their encyclopedias. However, their refusal did not stop Gates and he found the appropriate publication by buying the rights to the not particularly authoritative one Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, which is usually sold in supermarkets at lower prices and is not taken seriously by the major American encyclopedias. In 1993, the company “Microsoft” launched on the market encyclopedia Encarta – the first general (universal) multimedia encyclopedia in CD-ROM format without a published book counterpart. Her first release includes the largely revised and expanded text of the 29-volume Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (1992 edition), which after a few years stopped being published in book format. In just 1 year, 6 million Encarta encyclopedia discs were sold. In 1997, it held 60% of the CD-ROM encyclopedia market in the US. In December 1997, the Encarta encyclopedia was the first encyclopedia to be released in DVD format. Today, Encarta is widely known in Europe and Asia, where its versions are sold in different languages (German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese). In 1999 Encarta Africana was printed and was one of the first encyclopedias to be released first on CD-ROM and then as a book.
Encyclopaedia Britannica – the largest and most authoritative English-language encyclopedia, released its first disc in 1995, with only text and illustrations, no music or video; only in 1998 did multimedia appear Britannica на CD-ROM. However, Britannica became the undisputed leader among online encyclopedias, launching its online version on the Internet at the end of 1997 Britannica online and its search engine Britannica Internet Guid.
In 1996-1997, the Canadian encyclopedia was released on CD-ROM Canadian Encyclopedia, Columbia Encyclopedia, the French Encyclopédie Larousse Multimédia, Brockhaus Enzyklopädie etc.
The first electronic encyclopedias in Russia appeared in the mid-1990s. Dozens of specialized multimedia encyclopedias were published, until in 1996 the universal Bolshaya encyclopedia Cyril and Methodius appeared on the market on CD-ROM. This is the first multimedia encyclopedia in Russian. It is based on the well-known printed edition “Bolshoi encyclopedic dictionary” of “Bolshaya Rossiyskaya encyclopedia” publishing house (1996 edition). Six years of hard work are needed by the large author and editorial team to create the universal multimedia encyclopedia “Big Encyclopedia Cyril and Methodius” – one of the most authoritative encyclopedic publications in Russia. Creators supplement 80,000 short articles with illustrations, sound, video clips, interactive maps and animations. Many new authors are attracted, the encyclopedia is updated and expanded annually. The sixth edition was released in 2002 in three versions – on 2 CD, 8 CD and DVD, and includes 82,000 articles, 5 glossaries, 18,700 illustrations and over 30 appendices.
Since 2001, volumes of the popular Polish 30-volume encyclopedia PWN have also been published on CD-ROM. The Concise Polish Encyclopedia Mala Encyklopedia PWN A-ZETKA (35 000 articles, 1994), was released on CD-ROM in 2001 and is reissued and expanded every year.
The first Bulgarian electronic encyclopedia “Bulgarian Encyclopedia A-Z” was published at the end of 2002, a few months after the publication of the second revised and updated printed edition. The intellectual product included in the two versions of the encyclopedia – paper and electronic – was created by the staff of the research center “Bulgarian Encyclopaedia” at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with academician Evgeni Golovinski as the scientific leader. Chief editors in the individual fields, authors and consultants are prominent Bulgarian scientists and specialists. The development of the software product is the work of the “Sirma” Software Company, and the publishing and distribution activities are carried out by the “Trud” Book Publishing House. The creation of such a unique product for our small country involves enormous efforts and investments. The preparation for the electronic edition started parallel to the printing of the book and was a real challenge for the “Bulgarian Encyclopedia” team. The experience gained by foreign encyclopedias – Encarta, Britanica, Bolshaya encyclopedia Cyril and Methodius and other electronic editions – was studied. But it was necessary to create a version of the Bulgarian edition, an electronic encyclopedia for the Bulgarian reader, which would make it easier to search and find the information included in the book edition of the encyclopedia. In order to make maximum use of the volume of the paper edition, the articles included in the book are written with many abbreviations, which sometimes makes it difficult for the reader. Writing the abbreviations for the electronic edition was our first task, which also required a new language editing of the text. One of our main tasks was to determine the categories and subcategories in which to group the articles. They had to correspond not only to the scientific categorization in each field of knowledge, but also to facilitate the reader’s search for information as much as possible. The electronic edition allows for the inclusion of a greater volume of information and illustrations, so another task was checking references, constantly updating the text, acquiring additional illustrations, and compiling and editing new appendices. Our ambition to have the e-edition on the market shortly after the book was printed shortened the preparation time. The quality of the resulting product was completely satisfactory, and the price was almost half that of the paper edition. The electronic Bulgarian encyclopedia “A-Z”, published at the beginning of the new century, is adequate for its time and is a symbolic sign of the continuation of the good encyclopedic tradition in Bulgaria. It is a scientific reference publication intended for a wide range of readers, an irreplaceable source of knowledge, facts and information in the field of natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, literature and the arts.
Only two years after the appearance of the first multimedia encyclopedia in Bulgarian, at the end of 2004, the second edition of the electronic encyclopedia was released, significantly expanded and modernized. It contains 32,000 articles and over 10,000 illustrations – 2,000 new articles and 2,500 revised and expanded articles, 3,000 new illustrations and maps and a 3D world atlas, up-to-date statistics, tables of useful information, multimedia and text applications, new questions on the interactive game. The publication includes more than 300 video fragments from Bulgarian and foreign feature and popular science films, music excerpts, text applications with selected short excerpts from works of art by Bulgarian and foreign authors, and popular science articles. The search possibilities have been significantly expanded, as in addition to phrase and forms, the reader can choose to search only in titles, by categories, with illustrations, with movies, with notes, with sounds, with tables, with a marker, as well as a combined search. At the bottom of the right panel of the screen, below the space in which the article is displayed, are a box for setting an Internet search and a box for taking notes. Any notes made by the reader are saved, and the next time the article they were taken to is opened, they are reloaded into the Notes field. They can also be saved in text format and used to update, expand and correct articles. The new application Chronicle of Humanity in the form of a timeline presents the most significant events in the development of society, science and culture of humanity by continents and separately for Bulgaria. The Statistics application makes it possible to compare two to five selected countries simultaneously on various statistical indicators.
The Galleries application is particularly rich. It contains various sections with images of different themes, united in 4 large groups – Space, Nature, Human body, Civilizations. The Cosmos gallery includes images and information on the planets of the solar system, various nebulae and galaxies. In the Nature gallery, various types of Fungi, Subtropical Plants, Invertebrates, Fish, Birds, Mammals and Minerals are shown with numerous photos and illustrations, and you can hear the sounds made by about 50 types of animals. The Human Body gallery has 14 sub-galleries (Skull, Respiratory System, Nervous System, Circulation, Skeleton, Heart, Eye, Ear, etc.). In the Civilizations gallery, Temples of Different Cultures and Religions, Seven Wonders of the World, Weapons Through the Ages, Chronicle of Significant Technical Inventions from Antiquity to the End of the 20th Century, and Masterpieces of Art and Architecture are displayed in separate sub-galleries from different eras.
Bulgaria is presented in a separate appendix with overview articles and richly illustrated.
A turning point in the publishing of electronic encyclopedias was the global world network communication Internet in the late 1990s. Although it was discovered as early as 1969, its use began in 1989, after the introduction of the world computer network World Wide Web (WWW), which made it possible to process and transfer multimedia information via the Internet. The WEB provides unlimited opportunities to access a huge volume of hypermedia information, interconnected by links. However, in order to view hypermedia documents, computer users must have certain hardware and software that supports multimedia – sound and video cards, graphics operating systems, and computer programs. These are the capabilities of the new generation of computers and the operating systems Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP. Developments in computer engineering and technology in the late 1990s and the creation of sufficiently powerful computers and modems allowed encyclopedias to be developed in online versions that included the full text of their paper and electronic versions with significantly more multimedia applications. The full version of the online publications are free to readers who have installed the product from CD-ROM or DVD, and are freely accessible as part of the resources. (E.g. Encarta online contains 68,000 articles, 4,500 of which are open access). The new system allows encyclopedia editors to update their editions much more frequently than when publishing them on paper or on electronic disk. Since 2000, dozens of large encyclopedias are available online and are constantly updated with new terms, illustrations, maps, multimedia applications.
The collection of various electronic encyclopedias in one place on the Web and the creation of information and educational portals with constantly updated and expanded databases has unlimited possibilities for searching and finding information. One of the main elements of any national education strategy is e-learning and working with the Internet. Almost all large electronic encyclopedias have built information and educational portals that provide access to educational information for students, teachers and parents to increase the level of education and scientific qualification of those participating in the educational process.
In implementation of the program for the introduction of information and communication technologies in Bulgarian schools from the beginning of 2005, the scientific and educational website www.znam.bg. The web portal ZNAM.BG is conceived as the Bulgarian online treasury of knowledge, an inexhaustible source of knowledge at the service of learners of all ages. The creation of the portal is a joint venture of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Trud Book Publishing House, Sirma Software Company, Ministry of Transport and Communications and Ministry of Education and Science. Each of the 50,000 modern computers equipped in Bulgarian schools is provided with a multimedia DVD, which also includes the electronic “Bulgarian Encyclopedia A-Z”, with free one-year access to all resources of the encyclopedic portal ZNAM.BG. We hope that this knowledge initiative, of which our team is a part, will contribute to the construction of electronic resources in the Bulgarian language on the Internet and will connect Bulgarian education to the world information society.
ELENA BLAZEVA
editor in the “Natural-Mathematical and Technical Sciences” editorial office,
leading editor of the Bulgarian Encyclopedia “A-Z”
