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''Encyclopedia Americana'' is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic. The encyclopedia has more than 45,000 articles, most of them more than 500 words and many running to considerable length (the "United States" article is over 300,000 words). The work's coverage of American and Canadian geography and history has been a traditional strength. Written by 6,500 contributors, the ''Encyclopedia Americana'' includes over 9,000 bibliographies, 150,000 cross-references, 1,000+ tables, 1,200 maps, and almost 4,500 black-and-white line art and color images. It also has 680 factboxes. Most articles are signed by their contributors. Long available as a 30-volume print set, the ''Encyclopedia Americana'' is now marketed as an online encyclopedia requiring a subscription. In March 2008, Scholastic said that print sales remained good but that the company was still deciding on the future of the print edition. The company did not produce an edition in 2007, a change from its previous approach of releasing a revised print edition each year. The most recent print edition of the ''Encyclopedia Americana'' was published in 2006. The online version of the ''Encyclopedia Americana'', first introduced in 1997, continues to be updated and sold. This work, like the print set from which it is derived, is designed for high school and first-year college students along with public library users. It is available to libraries as one of the options in the Grolier Online reference service, which also includes the ''Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia'', intended for middle and high school students, and ''The New Book of Knowledge'', an encyclopedia for elementary and middle school students. Grolier Online is not available to individual subscribers. == Early history == The ''Encyclopædia Americana. A popular dictionary of arts, sciences, literature, history, politics and biography, brought down to the present time; including a copious collection of original articles in American biography; on the basis of the 7th ed. of the German Conversations-Lexicon'' was founded by German-born Francis Lieber. It was the first full-size encyclopedia of American authorship, being preceded by ''Dobson's Encyclopædia'' (1789–1798), and other American reprints of British encyclopedias,〔see list enumerated at Low's Encyclopedia〕 as well as a few compact American encyclopedias such as the four-volume ''Minor Encyclopedia'' of 1803, and the seven-volume ''Low's Encyclopedia'', of 1805-1811. Lieber presented the idea of an American encyclopedia, based on Brockhaus' ''Conversations-Lexikon'', to Carey, Lea & Carey of Philadelphia in January 1828, then the largest publishing house in the United States. Although he invoked the name of the German encyclopedia, he explained that this work would not be simply a translation but be a distinctively American reference work, omitting much of the European matter. The publishers were not at first receptive to the idea, but Lieber had made numerous contacts with American intellectuals who convinced the publishers to commit to the project. Several weeks later they replied with their agreement to the project. "However," notes, "instead of being granted a royalty on sets sold, he would be compensated by payments totaling $20,000, and from this sum he must defray editorial costs, such as fees for translators and contributors and salaries of editorial assistants. This may have been a fair enough proposition for the period, but it would leave Lieber in straitened circumstances when the work was done."〔Drake De Kay, (. "Encyclopedia Americana, First Edition", ''Journal of Library History'' ), 3 (1968), p. 205〕 Assisted by Edward Wigglesworth, a recent graduate of Harvard University, Lieber set to work. When it was clear they could not keep to their scheduled output of a volume every three months, Thomas Gamaliel Bradford joined the editorial team.〔De Kay, ''Encyclopedia Americana'', p. 207〕 The editors offered fifty cents per German page to translators of the ''Conversations-Lexicon'', while contributors of new articles would receive one dollar per page. The later was the rate set by the ''North American Review''. Notable contributors to this edition include: Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, who provided some twenty articles on legal topics including "Common Law", "Contract", "Corpus Delicti", "Courts of England and the United States", "Criminal Law", "Equity", "Evidence", "Jury", "Law", "Natural Law", and "Usury"; John Pickering, who wrote "Agrarian Law", "Americanism", "Indian Languages", and part of "Accents"; and John Davidson Godman, who agreed to contribute articles on natural history, but his work was prematurely ended when he died of tuberculosis in 1830.〔De Kay, ''Encyclopedia Americana'', pp. 206f〕 Also worthy of note was Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose contributions on French topics include a 25,000-word biography on the former emperor of France, which according to De Kay was the longest biographical article in the ''Encyclopedia Americana''.〔 The first volume was released September 1829, at the price of $2.50, and quickly sold out. When completed in 1833, the first edition comprised 13 volumes.〔 Despite the success of the ''Encyclopedia'', the Panic of 1837 led the Careys to scale back their catalog and concentrate on medical works. Nevertheless, this work continued to return profits to its owners on a regular basis. Publishing houses across the United States, and even in Canada, would rent or purchase Carey stereotype plates and publish ''Encyclopedia'' editions with their own imprints at the foot of the title pages, while retaining the Carey copyright notes on the overleaf, through 1858.〔De Kay, "Encyclopedia Americana", p. 212〕 In 1846, a supplementary fourteenth volume was issued. In 1848, John Sutter used the set to verify the authenticity of the gold found in his mill, a discovery that would start the California Gold Rush. A separate ''Encyclopedia Americana'', published by J.M. Stoddart, was printed between 1883 and 1889, as a supplement to American reprintings of the 9th edition of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica.'' It was four quarto volumes meant to "extend and complete the articles in ''Britannica''". Stoddart's work, however, is not connected to the earlier work by Lieber. In 1902 a new version in 16 volumes that carried over some of the old material was published under the title ''Encyclopedia Americana,'' under the editorial supervision of ''Scientific American'' magazine. The magazine's editor, Frederick Converse Beach, was editor-in-chief, and was said to be assisted by hundreds of eminent scholars and authorities who served as consulting editors or authors. The first publisher was R.S. Peale & Co; between 1903 and 1906 further editions were issued by the Americana Corp. and the Scientific American Compiling Department, with George Edwin Rines appointed managing editor in 1903. The relationship with ''Scientific American'' was terminated in 1911. From 1907 to 1912, the work was published as ''The Americana.'' A major new edition appeared in 1918–20 in 30 volumes, with George Edwin Rines as editor-in-chief.〔 An ''Annual'' or ''Yearbook'' was also published each year beginning in 1923 and continuing until 2000. The encyclopedia was purchased by Grolier in 1945. By the 1960s, sales of the ''Americana'' and its sister publications under Grolier—''The Book of Knowledge'', the ''Book of Popular Science,'' and ''Lands and Peoples''—were strong enough to support the company's occupancy of a large building (variously named the Americana Building and the Grolier Building) in Midtown Manhattan, at 575 Lexington Avenue. Sales during this period were accomplished primarily through mail-order and door-to-door operations. Telemarketing and third-party distribution through their Lexicon division added to sales volumes in the 1970s. By the late 1970s, Grolier had moved its operations to Danbury, Connecticut. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Encyclopedia Americana」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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