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Rarely have school librarians seen so many children so eager to get at the encyclopedia. At Lindbergh School in Palisades Park, N.J., about 600 pupils a week read it. At Princeton High School in Princeton, N.J., 30 children a day use it. At Palisades Park High School, 15 students line up each weekday by 8 a.m. to get their chance to scan it. The object of all this excitement is the Academic American, an electronic encyclopedia...
...Academic American Encyclopedia is carried by the Dow Jones News/Retrieval service and Bibliographic Retrieval Services, two information data base systems. Dow Jones News/Retrieval also carries business and financial news, while Bibliographic Retrieval Services supplies information on academic and scientific research. The two firms provide the electronic encyclopedia to some 90,000 subscribers, including 200 public and university libraries and eight schools in three states. Customers can hook up to the encyclopedia with a personal computer over a telephone line or via cable television. Average price for the service: 60? a minute during the day with a personal computer...
...electronic encyclopedia is exactly the same as the printed version of the Academic American, published by Grolier Inc., which consists of 21 volumes, 28,000 articles and 9 million words. By comparison, the older and more respected Encyclopaedia Britannica has 30 volumes and 43 million words, while the World Book has 22 volumes and roughly 10 million words. Computerization, though, makes it relatively easy to update the Academic American, and a new version comes out every six months. An updated edition of the Britannica is published only annually, and the World Book is also modified once a year...
...first priority for the new encyclopedia's developers was ease of use. Dow Jones News/Retrieval tested the encyclopedia on 25 sixth-graders before putting it on the market. Said Richard J. Levine, editorial director of Dow Jones' information services: "Our goal was to make it so easy to use that you wouldn't need an instruction booklet. No one has ever tried to make such a complex thing so simple...
Children report that using the electronic Academic American is both effortless and more fun than studying printed volumes. To look up the life of Winston Churchill, for example, a student first types in a few words to make contact with the computer and hook up to the encyclopedia service. He or she then begins an electronic search. If just the word Churchill is typed, a choice of eight items is given, from Churchill River in Newfoundland to Sir Winston. After selecting Sir Winston, the student is offered six sections of an article about different phases of Churchill's life...