Navigate the Britannica.com site easily from this opening page.

Edinburgh printer Colin Macfarquhar and Edinburgh engraver Andrew Bell, who conceived The Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1768, would hardly recognize today's online Britannica (http://www.britannica.com), a resource that includes not only the complete 231-year-old encyclopedia, but also a news source; an online store; a web directory; weather, stock, and sports resources. The site is home to content from a variety of newspapers, wire services, magazines, and Internet sites.

Britannica.com made access to all the site's features free in October 1999. According to Tom Panelas, director of corporate communication for Britannica.com, "Succeeding on the Internet means, above all, being relevant to the daily needs and interests of your customers, and making Britannica.com free enables us to do that. It's part of a larger strategy to broaden our appeal and reinvent the Britannica brand for the digital era. People think of us as an encyclopedia, but today we are much more than that; we're a place you can come every day for high-quality information on just about anything that's on your mind."

Pull up the home page, spend a few minutes browsing, and you get a fair idea of what Panelas means about reinventing the Britannica brand. Not only does the site provide free access to the 32-volume encyclopedia and the complete Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it also culls information from more than 70 first-class magazines and journals, provides news from wire services and newspapers, and offers links to more than 125,000 sites and 100 million Web pages.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica is the oldest and largest general reference work in English, and it boasts entries written by people who are experts in their fields. Britannica.com is applying the same principles used to compile the 230-year-old encyclopedia to the way its Web material is sorted and catalogued. Independent contractors, such as neurologist Anthony H. Risser, Ph.D., find and review sites relating to their areas of expertise for inclusion. But searching the Web for pertinent sites requires a different kind of research than composing an encyclopedia entry.

"For the most part," Risser says, "reviewers pursue their own cyber muses in searching." In his own searches, Risser says he attempts to balance two goals: "to find broad sites that many Britannica visitors might have an interest in examining but, also, to find very, very specific sites that only a few visitors might have a need for but once having found the site, have access to information that clearly meets their need."



Launching Your Search

You can use the resources compiled by Risser and his colleagues in one of two ways. You can enter a search term or phrase in the Find box at the top of the opening page, or you can click the ADVANCED SEARCH tab at the top of the page to refine your search terms. The Find option automatically searches all of Britannica.com's resources and will accept Boolean operators (words that allow you to narrow searches so results are more relevant to what you are looking for.)

An advanced search lets you seek results in the Encyclopedia Britannica, The Web's Best Sites, the Internet, or in the entire Britannica.com site, which will return material from all of these sources. You can use any or all of the five fields provided to enter a search term, and you can choose to search for the term(s) in the contents of the entire document or in the title only. Adjust the tabs to the left of the search fields to search for "the exact phrase," "any of the words," "all of the words," or "none of the words" you've entered.

Try switching from a more specific option to a less specific one if your search returns too few results. Alternately, the "none of the words" option is useful when you want to limit the scope of your search. For example, if you want information on Clintons other than Hillary, enter "Clinton" in one field. In the next search field, enter "Hillary" and set the corresponding tab to "none of the words."

Be careful how you enter your search string; a little precision in using search terms can make a big difference in the quality of the results returned. We did a search for "alzheimers" and found no encyclopedia articles and fewer resources than we expected. When we entered "Alzheimer's disease," however, we found masses of encyclopedia entries, sites, books, and magazine information. So the moral is: be precise and willing to try several approaches. Try switching from the "all of the words" option to "any of the words" if you aren't getting as many matches as you'd like.

When your search is completed, the site will return a page with four columns of information: The Web's Best Sites (rank indicated by stars), Encyclopaedia Britannica articles, Magazines, and Related Books (with links to Barnes & Noble). Clicking any of these links will take you to the full resource.

The site's database includes more than 72,000 encyclopedia articles and year-in-review pieces. The Best Sites Internet Guide "classifies, rates, and reviews more than 125,000 websites," according to useful research information included in the site's Questions & Comments page. And the standard search calls on selections from numerous magazines, including The Economist and TIME. This page of the site also provides links to many other reference sites that may be useful in your search.



Exploring Subjects of Interest

In the list of subjects below the Explore bar on your left, you can move quickly to resources in a range of interest areas, which include Arts, Books, Religion, Entertainment, and others. Click the arrow to the left of any of the listed topics. When the next page comes up, rest your mouse pointer on a topic, and you'll see whether further exploration of that topic will include any or all of the following: Web sites, news and features, and encyclopedia articles, as well as a Site of the Week and, often, a Book of the Week.

Navigate to the type of information you want. Whichever information you choose, be sure to check the page's Calendar listing, where you'll find information about online forums and upcoming radio and TV programs that address related topics. When you open an article, notice the handy links provided to print or e-mail the article, as well as links to additional information in yearbooks or on the Web.



Newsletters

Move back to the site's home page and click the Sign Up For E-Mail Newsletters link to subscribe to any of the following newsletters:

Movable Type supplies you with weekly information on the featured literary topic in the Books channel (http://www.britannica.com/books). Look for recommended reading, Britannica articles, links to relevant site, quizzes, and quotes.

The Site of the Day gives users links to a featured Web site often keyed to current events.

The Deep Background newsletter provides additional materials on the day's news stories through a combination of additional links, excerpts, and quotations.

Finally, In the Know appears in your mailbox every Monday morning with updates on new features and articles added to the site during the past week.



Daily News

Along the left column of the home page you'll find links to News, Markets, Sports, Weather, and a link for accessing e-mail. The weather page features links to weather coverage around the world and a section of links called Breaking News & Storm Centers, where you can find information on emerging weather situations as well as track storms. Under Weather Features, check sources such as the Old Farmer's Almanac and the National Climatic Data Center, among others.

Pull up an Encyclopaedia Britannica article and find substantive information with links to additional Internet resources.

In the News section, those who head first to The Washington Post site for their morning news will be pleased to note that britannica.com partners with the Post and several other news sources to provide an excellent survey of national and international news. You can get in-depth coverage by accessing other site resources when a country, event, or person sparks your desire for background information.

In addition to general financial news, market watchers can set up a personal financial home page in the Markets section and gear it to the market information they want to see.



E-mail Accounts

If you want a classy e-mail address with little effort, you'll be happy to know you can easily set up a Britannica.com e-mail account while on site. Not only can you set up filters and keep an address book, but you can also report junk mail, store mail in folders, and program vacation messages. All for free. To set up your account, click E-Mail in the upper-right section of the home page or on the left hand bar in the Today section.



Britannica Store

In the top bar on the opening page, don't miss the STORE tab. Click here to go to the Britannica store, which includes Britannica CDs, the print edition of the encyclopedia, and a variety of other educational items. Orders can be placed using an 800 number or online.

On the main page of the store, you'll find featured Britannica and Merriam-Webster products. There are links to the site's Secure Shopping Guarantee and privacy policy at the bottom of this page.

You can browse all merchandise by resting your mouse on any of the categories listed under Browse on the left of your screen. However, a certain category may not actually contain merchandise in all the categories that pop up when you rest your mouse over it. For example, we were looking for software in the Biology category. We found a couple of videos but no software.



User Input and Site Policies

The designers of this site have anticipated user questions and needs. The bottom of the home page presents links to company and site information as well as a Comments and Questions link.

The Company Information link takes you to pages from which you can access press releases and read the story of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from its 1768 beginnings to the present.

Clicking the Comments &Questions link takes you to hyperlinked questions about how to search the site, how to recommend a Web site to the site's editors, and how to comment on an Encyclopaedia Britannica article or suggest a topic for a new article. You can learn about the criteria used to select Web sites and view a list of Britannica.com staff members.

by Sharon Shaw

Tips . . . For Using Britannica.com If your search results are too broad, you'll find narrowing options at the top of the screen under "Did you mean…." If you don't see this phrase, the word or phrase you entered in the Find box was sufficiently narrow, and your search can't be further refined in this way. Get a great quick tutorial on Internet searching! Enter a word or phrase in the Find box at the top of the opening page. When the results page comes up, click on the "Get tips and advice" link. You'll be taken to a page that explains different searching techniques and makes even Boolean operators seem simple. Sign up for a free e-mail account that lets you define filters, set-up automatic responses for when you are away, consolidate other mail accounts to feed into your Britannica mailbox, and create customized signatures and appearances. Registration is a snap. Set up your own Markets home page for a daily dose of the market news in the industries that interest you most. Just click Markets in the left column of the home page and follow the directions. Find hundreds of thousands of links to sites on a subject that interests you. Near the top of the search results pages you'll find an option to search over 100 million more Web pages; click it to relaunch your search. We tried this for a search on aardvarks and learned more than we ever wanted to know! The search results are ranked by percentage of relevance.

Britannica.com Fact Sheet What do Carl Sagan, Sir Walter Scott, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cecil B. DeMille, Linus Pauling, and John F. Kennedy have in common? They are all among the thousands of contributors who have made the Encyclopaedia Britannica a trusted resource during its more than 230 years of existence. The Britannica, begun in 1768 by two Scottish men, one a printer and one an engraver, has been the encyclopedia of record since 1790 when a pirated edition found its way to the United States to be purchased by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. In 1993 the Britannica became the world's first online encyclopedia as a subscription site (http://www.eb.com). Today this site exists as an encyclopedia-only, advertisement-free subscription resource for academic institutions. In October of 1999, Britannica.com (http://www.britannica.com) was launched as a free site. So anticipated was this launch that millions of eager site visitors overwhelmed the servers. Within 24 hours, the site was taken offline, and the launch was delayed by a couple of weeks as the company revamped its site to handle the traffic. When Britannica.com re-opened, users were invited to access resources that included the entire 32-volume encyclopedia, material from more than 70 magazines, news from newspapers and newswires, and a directory of Web sites. A content partnership with Washingtonpost .Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) and the work of thousands of freelance researchers and reviewers ensures that reliable, current information and resources to be continually added to the site. The site makes use of the Information Management and Retrieval System (IMARS) for searching the Internet. IMARS links three Britannica.com databases: a classification Thesaurus of semantic terms; The Index, which tracks specific topics; and a database of people, events, and places.