Britannica Goes Asian

"Our board of directors," says Dale H. Hoiberg, editor and vice-president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, "has always had a keen interest in south Asia. We are extremely bullish about the region's potential, in terms of both the print and the electronic markets." And why not? Encyclopaedia Britannica sold over 1,000 sets in India last year. According to marketing projections for the region, while the electronic version of Britannica is catching on fast and the print market is plateauing, the latter still continues to exist. "The home market may have been affected, but institutional buyers will continue to invest in the print sets," feels Encyclopaedia Britannica's south Asia general manager, Aalok Wadhwa.

Hoiberg, on his part, dismisses the rumour that Encyclopaedia Britannica is planning to phase out its print edition in favour of its electronic form. "Editorially, we haven't changed at all. It is only that new delivery vehicles have become available. All that has happened is that we now bring out two products instead of one," he explains.

So even as marketing strategies are being modified to factor in the advances in technology, Britannica is going in for a long overdue makeover, contentwise. It is currently in the midst of a major core revision exercise, the first to be undertaken in 25 years, which will culminate in the publication of the 40-volume print set by the end of 2001. This global exercise involves 7,000 contributors who will, over the next two and half years, deliver a total of 44 million words to the largest-ever Britannica print set. Editorial teams are in place all over the world to handle the project.

Equally significantly, Britannica is looking particularly at the Indian subcontinent as a key resource base— in recognition of the region's growing importance as a market for its widely known print and electronic products. In the preparation of the upcoming South Asia encyclopaedia, Britannica, which set up a fullfledged New Delhi office last year, will use the expertise of over 400 scholars in the SAARC region.

Hoiberg is particularly excited about the upcoming south Asia encyclopaedia. " We've done small projects of this kind in other parts of the world, but nothing as big as this," says he. "The south Asia product will be spread across our entire database— print, CD-ROM, Britannica Online. Some of the material could be out on Britannica Online before its publication in printed form," reveals Hoiberg.

According to Indu Ramchandani, Britannica 's south Asia editor, old texts are being revised and new material written for the south Asia product, which is expected to be out before the 40-volume Encyclopaedia print set. "We will use sizeable portions of the core revision work as well as material specific to the students' encyclopaedia," she says. Currently, Encyclopaedia Britannica has 21,000 entries and 13 lakh words on south Asia. "After the core revision exercise, that will almost double," says Jaisinghani.