You have probably noticed there are several new entrants into the free online encyclopedia business. Wikipedia is the best known of these types of reference works. Wikipedia allows anyone to add content to its pages, thus creating a bit of concern about the quality of its information.
Groups of scholars are now working on free online encyclopedias, and they provide much more control over the content posted. Two examples are Encyclopedia of Life and Encyclopedia of Earth. We encourage you to examine and use these new offerings. Free online encyclopedias that provide reviewed, scholarly information will be linked on our database pages.
The library also purchases online encyclopedias for your use. They cover a wide range of disciplines, providing overviews in subjects as diverse as engineering, immunology, art, and religion. Go to our Encyclopedia page to see the complete list.
The idea of authoritative, subject-specific wikipedias is mentioned in this post from the “Invisible Library” blog http://sanchezkisser.com/blog/2007/05/23/wiki-gathering/
In this post the author expands on comments made in an interview with David Weinberger, author of “Everything is Miscellaneous”. This approach would certainly improve a reader’s confidence in the accuracy of the information but still allow for quick updating and the ease of searching found in wikipedia.