a085  0740  12 Oct 83
PM-Encyclopedias, Adv 18,680
$Adv18
For Release Tues AMs, Oct. 18
Printed Reference Book: Bound for Extinction in Age of Information?
By KATHY HORAK
Associated Press Writer
    LOS ANGELES (AP) - Some things never change, which simplifies life
for encyclopedia publishers. Most things do, however, which keeps
hundreds of encyclopedia writers, editors, researchers and analysts
employed.
    But for how long?
    Some library scientists predict that multi-volume reference books
will go the way of clay tablets and papyrus as computers take over in
the Age of Information.
    ''Many libraries already are geared to the electronic age,'' said
F.W. Lancaster, professor of library science at the University of
Illinois.
    ''There will certainly be a day, I believe, when publishers will no
longer publish encyclopedias and libraries will be museums of what
was published in the past,'' Lancaster said, admitting, ''That's not a
popular thesis.''
    Based on a study for the National Science Foundation on how soon
electronic data systems might replace the printed word, Lancaster
concluded the shift would occur in Western societies by the year 2000,
mainly because ''in printed form, encyclopedias can't keep up.''
    But publishers of the nation's six major multi-volume encyclopedias
still try.
    Entries in Academic American, Colliers, Encyclopedia Americana, Funk
& Wagnalls, New Encyclopaedia Britannica and World Book are
constantly updated on in-house computer files. Revisions are published
at least every 10 years - a cycle deliberately coinciding with the
U.S. census.
    Funk & Wagnalls, for example, has undergone 20 complete revisions
since it first appeared in 1912. Company president Jim Stoltzfus said
entries were completely rewritten every decade ''because we must
accommodate all the new census information, which hits about 80
percent of the (27) volumes.''
    Who decides what's in Funk & Wagnalls? A 100-member editorial staff
and some 1,200 contributing editors, along with you, me and the
Census Bureau.
    ''We'd include a topic that was a one-time sensational news item but
which has progressed to the point where it has a constant presence in
news and discussions. Instead of simply a news item, it's a political
reality,'' said Leon Bram, the encyclopedia's vice president and
editor in chief.
    Bram explained with a new entry in the latest edition: world energy
supply - ''actually, Energy Supply, World.''
    The Arab oil embargo, the search for petroleum in remote Alaskan and
Siberian fields and industrial nations' reaction to changing supplies
were sufficient ''to consolidate this as a topic itself,'' Bram said.
    Among other new entries, Stoltzfus cited sports medicine,
international terrorism and ''so-called controversial lifestyle
entries'' like sex education, venereal disease and homosexuality.
    ''Perhaps the biggest change is in the number of places in the world
that one must add and subtract as population figures change,'' Bram
said. ''The 1980 census caused us to add over 400 new inhabited
places.''
    Funk & Wagnalls keeps all its basic source material in computers
because that form is easier to consolidate and edit. Lancaster
insisted it was simply common sense to handle all reference material
that way.
    He noted that Academic American and Encyclopaedia Britannica already
had their volumes in computer form for access by consumers with home
computers, who pay a small fee for each entry they use.
    ''I certainly can conceive of electronic encyclopedias through
videodiscs,'' Lancaster said. ''Eventually they could have moving
pictures and sound, so instead of describing how an airplane flies
they could have a whole model of a plane. A child could actually
manipulate it, so it becomes more like a videogame.''
    But Dr. Robert Greer, dean of the graduate school of Library and
Information Management at the University of Southern California,
disagreed.
    ''Obviously (printed encyclopedias) are not the investment they were
years ago, but that doesn't mean they're less valuable,'' he said.
''They can be even more valuable (than electronic data systems)
because one of the problems with computers is people get too much
information and they don't have time to deal with it all. The systems
don't discriminate for them.''
    Dr. Robert Hayes, dean of UCLA's graduate school of Library and
Information Science, suggested what might be encyclopedias' ultimate
saving grace: ''Some people just like books.''
    End Adv for Tues AMs Oct 18
    
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