Folks,

Thanks for the comments and suggestions regarding ELIS.  I'm glad to hear that some places have bought ELIS that have not listed it in OCLC.  That seems to happen more frequently with electronic copies, though a number of libraries with electronic copies have also listed in OCLC.  See also my email to Karen Weaver and JESSE regarding the listings in OCLC.

Laval Hunsucker raises some important questions.  I think we should not underestimate the impact of the recent economic woes.  A lot of places were more cautious with their acquisitions dollars, and that certainly would have applied with respect to any large purchase.  Needless to say, a worldwide depression was not planned for in the timing of the encyclopedia.  The publisher's marketing is another factor.  I don't know how it compares with that of other encyclopedias or publishers.   Reviews also.  Kind of hard to send out $3000 copies to reviewers.  I've only seen one review of it so far.

As for Thomas Krichel's criticisms, it is unlikely that anything I say will satisfy you, but here goes:  I think we are in a transition period that has and will last for decades, in which we sort out print vs. electronic, and open-source type contributions from edited resources.   We may eventually go almost completely electronic, but the open-source vs. edited is a more complicated issue.  Both have advantages and disadvantages.  ELIS3 had a vision from Mary and me, with the help of the Editorial Advisory Board, and, in practice, as I had more time, I did most of the work to rationalize and organize the content.  At one time or another, I created over a hundred Excel spreadsheets, most of which had to do with what topics and areas to include or not in the encyclopedia.

Any project seems simple and straightforward at first, then gets more complicated as you get into it deeper, then resolves out to look  simple again.  But a hell of a lot of cogitation goes into getting the project from the beginning to the end.  What looks straightforward at the end, most certainly was not during the creation.  That editorial vision is either the great benefit, or the great disadvantage, depending on  your perspective, of having an edited resource.  Crowd-sourcing ensures that you get most every perspective--although the fights at Wikipedia show how difficult and incomplete that can be too.

The entries were not all out of date by the time they were published!  Much of the early part of that preparation time was consumed with sorting out what topics to include, and working with editorial board members.  I closely reviewed all 78 earlier volumes and supplements of the first and second editions, both to identify topics and to identify entries to bring into the 3rd edition.  I then spent a whole year researching who to invite, and inviting people.  Not everybody says "yes," you know.    You have to wait for a response to your invitation, and then, if they decline, invite another person.  It gets very time-consuming.  I'd say that the bulk of the actual manuscript receipt and reviewing took place over about an 18-month period.

 

And the 30% of earlier materials that were carried over to the 3rd edition were selected as carefully as the new material.  More than half of that 30% were UPDATED TO THE PRESENT by their authors.  So the new and revised portion of the encyclopedia added to 85%.  The  70% reflects the articles that were totally new.  These are actually astounding figures.  Most new editions of encyclopedias carry most of their content forward, with a relatively small portion being entirely new or revised.  In addition, there were some gems in the earlier encyclopedia that had not aged, or were desirable for their historical content, and I brought these into the new one deliberately.  Nothing happened by default.  Everything was chosen.

You may not realize what was involved in editing 565 article-length entries more or less at the same time. That's roughly 400 entries that were brand-new, 80 or so that were updated, and the remainder kept as is.  Think about it.  Editing a journal involves reviewing a few dozen manuscripts a year, selecting reviewers, collecting the input from reviewers, giving feedback to authors, then reviewing the revised version of the article, etc.  (In addition, for the encyclopedia, we had assistants doing spot-checking for accuracy and plagiarism.)  Well, imagine having two people working as Editors of the encyclopedia reviewing 480--repeat, 480--articles that way.   Again, this was a monster project, and in some ways it is a miracle that we were able to bring it off at all.  All the more frustrating that it is not as widely available as we would like to see.

Marcia

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