German publisher plans printed version of Wikipedia
Last Updated: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 | 4:02 PM ET
CBC News
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, will be appearing in German stores in September in an unusual format: as a book.
German publishing giant Bertelsmann AG said Wednesday it planned to publish a one-volume reference book containing the best of the Germany version of the popular online encyclopedia.
The 993-page book will contain approximately 50,000 definitions and 1,000 illustrations and will be priced at about 20 euros ($32.18 Cdn), according to the German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, the group behind the ncyclopedia.
Rather than drawing on the whole of Wikipedia's Germany edition — which contains some 740,000 entries, the book will reference the most-searched terms from the last year, said Beate Varnhorn, the head of publishing at Bertelsmann Encyclopedia Institute.
"A yearbook really can be a documentation of the zeitgeist," she said.
Wikipedia is best known for drawing from a community of writers around the world to contribute to thousands of subjects to the online reference source.
The move to publish a print version of even part of the encyclopedia is unusual because many of the features that make Wikipedia unique would be lost in the process.
There would be no hyperlinks allowing readers to click on links to related information. The articles presented would also be static, in contrast to the constantly updated entries in the online version.
The online encyclopedia also has a reputation for errors creeping into articles as a result of sloppiness or vandalism. But according to the New York Times, Bertelsmann has a staff of 10 editors that will condense and verify entries that will appear in the book.
Wikimedia head of business development Kul Wadhwa said in the foundation's blog that the project is in keeping with its mandate.
"I know it may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Wikipedia but our mission at the Wikimedia Foundation is make all human knowledge accessible to everyone, and that includes bringing that knowledge to the offline world," he wrote on Tuesday.
With files from the Associated Press
