Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with encyclopedia

Looking for my old scifi encyclopedia...

bmct — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:14:21 -0800

Looking for a specific illustrated encyclopedia of science fiction aliens. I owned a copy 15 years ago- beautiful glossy pages, each depicting an alien from a sci-fi book, and I believe a short paragraph of description. The cover was black with one of the gorgeous illustrations on the front. The illustrations were very detailed and may have been painted. Wasn't gigantic, maybe a 1/4 inch thick. I have googled and searched amazon to no avail. Thanks in advance.

What are these old copper printing plates?

gemmy — Sun, 10 May 2009 17:24:35 -0800

Anyone recognize these old copper printing plates? They were used to print some sort of encyclopedia or other information book, but which one? In the late 90s, my mom and I picked up some old copper printing plates [link goes to Flickr set] from an estate sale in Connecticut. We spent an hour or so picking out a few neat-looking ones from a huge set (I would estimate about 100-150) of these printing plates, stored in boxes and wrapped in old newspaper (the newspaper was from the 1950s, if I remember right). Each plate has a volume designation and a number. I did some serious looking in libraries and such at the time, but couldn't find anything about what these plates might have been used for. I have looked less seriously every few years since, but haven't found anything useful.

It looks like the copper plates were used for an encyclopedia type book, but the text from the plates isn't turning up anywhere online. For example, one of the plates says that Richard Wagner told Franz Liszt "Your God makes a lot of noise". But I can only find one place online that even mentions that Wagner quote, in a book from 1921. I only took photos of the ones I have hanging on my wall. I have two more plates in the closet - one is a picture and text about Tian Tan in Beijing, the other is a picture and text about the Great Wall of China.

I know it's a long shot, but do these plates look familiar to anyone? Any ideas what book they might have been used to print? Any suggestions for finding more information would also be appreciated. Thanks!

Looking for childhood Encyclopedia set.

studentbaker — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:46:40 -0800

I’m trying to remember the name of a set of themed encyclopedias for children from my childhood. Each book focused on a particular theme and had amazing illustrations and images that blew my little mind. The themes I can remember were dinosaurs, the ocean, plants, mammals, reptiles and I believe there was one focused on Native Americans and another on space exploration. I think I had around fifteen to twenty of the books. Each book was a different color. I think a new one came every year or six months, or maybe as my parents could afford them. This was in the late 70's, early 80's.

My mom gave them to a coworker for his children when I was in high school. I recently asked her about the books and she barely remembers books them, let alone the name. I would love to track down and purchase a set.

Games used to teach kids to research pre-Google

MCMikeNamara — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:52:40 -0800

[Apple II educational software AND encyclopedia filter] When computers came to our library/learning center when I was in elementary school (between 1983-1986), I was one of the first kids to get to play a library learning game during "learning center" time and was the first to finish two games. 1) What were the names of these games? 2) What encyclopedia was used? I believe there were two different games. Somewhat ironically, ithey was supposed to help us learn how to use the sets of the published sets of encyclopedias as reference materials. Each game required you to research questions in a volume of the encyclopedia -- one was in A, the other in M (again, I think) -- as you travelled from point to point.

Each game was on multiple 5.25" disks -- or used both sides. (I remember this because once my partner and I reached a certain point, he, ignorantly, thought that when it said to pull out the disk to change it, you had to turn it off, which meant we lost our work.)

I think the game was created by the encyclopedia that was necessary to use to answer the questions, but I'm not sure. Either way, finding the answers to the questions were specific to that "brand" of of encyclopedia. It wasn't World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica.

So my questions are:

1) What were the names of these games?
2) What encyclopedia was used?

Thanks

Can you recommend a concise offline digital encyclopedia?

jmstephan — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:18:01 -0800

I am seeking a digital enclyclopedia for offline use on my laptop, preferably something relatively concise, like a desk reference only digital. Of course there is the Dictionary program on my Macbook, but does anyone know of an encyclopedia-type counterpart?

Ency. for the kid

Chrischris — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:14:03 -0800

Multi-volume kids encyclopedia recommendations for a bright but not overly-precocious 6 year old. I believe my son would really love a good multi-volume childrens encyclopedia for Christmas, but I am having a difficult time getting a bead on which ones are best or even what is actually still available in print format. He's a fairly proficient reader who really likes charts and graphs and just about any sort of colorful infographic, so recommending well- illustrated sets would be a bonus.

What recommendations do you have? Also, if you have found any which did not meet your expectations, please let me know which ones and why.

Encyclopedia of 19th C literature

stbalbach — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:02:52 -0800

What is a good encyclopedia / dictionary for 19th and/or 20th century literature? For 19th I've found A guide to the best fiction in English (1913) but it's very old. For 20th, I often use Martin Seymour-Smith's The New Guide to Modern World Literature (scroll down to "A Modest Proposal" for a description) and would love to have something like it for the 19th century. Open to other suggestions for 20th century literature encyclopedia or dictionaries.

If you'll just point me in the right direction...

segatakai — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:10:01 -0800

I have a question in two parts. If that's illegal, admin, please delete the last part. I'd like to hear suggestions for websites I should look at, and then advice on whether this is really how I should move forward with this. Hopefully, this is much clearer in the ... part 1: I'm thinking about putting together a blog/website/internet doohickey that would eventually become an online encyclopedia about a very narrow topic. Narrow as it is, there could end up being many hundreds, but probably not thousands of entries. I'm intrigued by the wikipedia idea, where others can contribute and change etc, but for the time being, I'd like to have comments be the modus operandi for feedback and improvement on the main entry. I think the main thing about the wikipedia model that I like is the community aspect. I like the idea of building something with a group of people across the world (as far fetched as it may be, ultimately). My question is, what recommendations do you have for internet doohickeys that do this well? Do you know of a good encyclopedia/glossary/dictionary type site that ingeniously (or quite capably) handles comments and feedback from visitors? One obvious example is, ahem, AskMe, but please give me some more things to look at and get inspired by. Additionally, one thing that AskMe doesn't really allow that I'd like to incorporate if possible, is a way to comment about, say, one sentence in the main entry, and be able to see that comment in close proximity to the sentence in question, but never be confused about what is the main entry and what is the comment (like notes in the margin?). And I'd like people to be able to comment on the comment, etc. So there might eventually be six or more 'conversations' going on about different parts of one entry, all viewable (with some scrolling necessary, perhaps) on one page per entry. Does that make sense? Is that possible?

part 2: Should I do this?
Sometimes lately (in my more hubristic moments) I've begun to feel that maybe, among English-speaking individuals, I might actually be on the brink of becoming the most knowledgeable person on my narrow topic. I want to share the knowledge I've acquired over the last 10 years studying this narrow topic, but I do feel uncertain about 'giving it away.' The topic is narrow enough (and the 'target marget' infinitesimal enough) that I'm never going to make a million bucks writing books or lecturing about it, but I'm sure there's some money to be made, and I am reluctant to just toss it up on the net for the world to cannibalize. I understand the idea that having an effective web-presence leads to other opportunities, but there's a part of me that can't help asking: Wouldn't I be better off to write a book and just advertise it on the web? I sense that there are probably two camps on this -- please tell me which camp you are in and why, and where possible/applicable, point me to other resources to support your argument.

Thank you kindly for your support.

*I realize this "narrow topic" stuff is a little hinky, but somehow I'm uncomfortable spilling the details (though I realize you can all probably figure it out, this being the internet, and all). I also feel that being more general might induce more creative answers (?).

Sciencepedia.

softsantear — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 07:53:31 -0800

Is there something like the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, only for science? The top hits on Google looked promising, but turned out not to be - they offer cursory definitions at best. Wikipedia is good, but I want more.

Encyclopedia readers unite

shoepal — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:21:29 -0800

Is/was it normal to read Encyclopedia(s) as a child? Recently, I've come across a couple of references to reading the encyclopedia as a child (our own y6y6y6) "For some reason I can't explain, I also read encyclopedias. By the 7th grade I had read three. " I read a couple, as well, as a kid. I never thought it particularly odd or different. Was it a generational thing (growing up in the '70s/'80s? ) or a just dorky guy thing? The result of door2door salesmen and more disposable income and thus easy or easier access? Are there lots of former Encyclopedia readers out there?

Still room at the bottom?

sergeant sandwich — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:33:11 -0800

In 1959, Richard Feynman gave a now-famous talk at Caltech titled Plenty of Room at the Bottom in which he challenges the scientific community to write the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin. Has anybody ever done this? In this speech, Feynman offers a prize of $1,000 to anyone who can write a page of a book at 1/25000 of its original size, which is the reduction required to fit the entire encyclopedia on a pinhead. I understand this prize was claimed in 1985 by a graduate student at Stanford, Tom Newman. But has anybody ever actually gone all-out and put the entire EB on a head of a pin?

Semiotics Text Books?

zpousman — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:29:06 -0800

PhilosophyPhilter(!) I am writing an academic paper (not in philosophy) that uses some of the terms and basic structure of semiotics, the study of signs and the way that they represent objects and ideas. Does anybody know of a good book that I can use as a reference for this in my paper? I'd prefer not to have to reference online material (wikipedia, and this site are good), but would prefer a real book. I am hoping to point interested readers to concise definitions of the terms, like in a dictionary or encylopedia, and not to honking books by Pierce. Any ideas?

Favorite Wikipedia Entries

Tlogmer — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:06:44 -0800

What are the wisest/coolest/most surprising wikipedia entries you've run across? I already know about the Heavy Metal Umlaut and Exploding Whale.

What do you call the updating process for a CDRom encyclopaedia that updates itself from the web?

Pericles — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:25:41 -0800

CDRom encyclopaedia that updates itself from web. What do you call it's updating process? My old version of encarta can check its website to see if here is a more up-to-date version of an entry I'm looking at. If there is one, it downloads it to the hard-drive and always refers to that one when I go to that article again.

I've suggested to my client that he produce a similar cd of medical information which can"magically" update, and want to find a supplier - but don't know how to ask for what I want.

Encyclopedia recommendations for a bright 10 year old

soyjoy — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:44:20 -0800

Where can I find an Encyclopedia of Electricity for a very bright, engineering-oriented ten-year-old? [more inside] My son's ten, eleven next month, and reads voraciously. He has recently become very interested in electricity and sometimes asks questions I don't have a clue how to answer. Like "if magnetism works because of polarity, what about those the magnets that hold those little words on our refrigerator?" or "do bumper cars work because both the ceiling and the floor are electrified and the car makes the connection between them?" Obviously I could look each of these up on the Internet and eventually get back to him, but I want him to be able to find the answers himself, preferably in one volume (not via the Internet). I'm thinking there must be something geared to an 11- or 12-year-old that would be visually engaging but also pretty complete and well-organized in explaining the workings of electricity (and magnetism, probably). I've looked on amazon and a couple other places and so far there seems to be a wide gulf between 8-year-old-oriented "rub a balloon on your hair"-style fun books and "your complete course in electricity in simple steps" for those with a high-school education. Anybody know of anything more suitable?