Wikipedia headed for the printed page
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - April 23, 2008 The media company - whose units include publisher Random House
Inc. and music venture Sony BMG - said Wednesday that it plans to
publish "The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia" starting in
September with the content made up of 50,000 of the most-searched
terms on the German language edition of Wikipedia.
Beate Varnhorn, the head of publishing at Bertelsmann
Encyclopedia Institute said the "condensed, one-volume print
edition" would bring Wikipedia to a new audience.
She told The Associated Press that the sheer number of entries
on the German Wikipedia - at last count they numbered approximately
740,000 and would likely fill hundreds of printed volumes - meant
publishing all of it was not "a good project for the German book
trade."
But an annual collection of the most-sought out terms made
sense, she said. "A yearbook really can be a documentation of the
zeitgeist."
Varnhorn said they combed the list of popular terms to find
possible entries, which average between eight and 10 lines.
"When we studied the list, we found that there are lots of
keywords that we never thought could be that interesting," she
said.
The entries to be published include ones for French first lady
Carla Bruni, Nintendo Wii and German writers and musicians.
The entries will be fact-checked, particularly the "most risky
ones," she said, though she did not say which those were.
Like its Web-based namesake, the book will be under a free
license, meaning its content can be distributed and copied,
including commercially. Copies of the 992-page book - available
only in German - will retail for $31.80.
Bertelsmann has agreed to pay Wikimedia Deutschland eV, which
promotes the German-language version of the online encyclopedia,
$1.59 a copy, said Arne Klempert, the group's executive director.
"To some extent it's marketing for Bertelsmann. They are using
free content, free knowledge," he told The Associated Press.
"Legally, they don't have to pay anything for the content but they
don't want to give the impression that they are acting on the back
of the Wikipedia authors, so they decided to give something back
for that reason."
Klempert said the Wikipedia encyclopedia would be an unusual
reference tome.
"The approach of 'Wikipedia in One Volume' is to give the
people the information they are looking for," he said, contrasting
that approach to the process of publishing a traditional
encyclopedia put together by a select group of people behind closed
doors.
"This is the most important difference from traditional
encyclopedias," he said. "It's also an important thing in that
the sense of the Wikipedia spirit will go into this printed
volume."
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On the Net:
http://www.wikimedia.de
http://www.bertelsmann.com