Douglas Paul

Vice President Planning & Educational Services
Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Britannica Instant Research System is the first electronic product based on the complete text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Designed for use by professional researchers, fact checkers and librarians, it combines the long-trusted authority and scope of the Encyclopaedia Britannica with natural language, high speed search and retrieval. Not presented as a multimedia encyclopedia (it is a text-only system), we believe it is more usefully compared to online databases.

How it Works

The main screen, called Idea Search, has a series of windows. The user inputs a query into the Query Window. The query may be a word, several words, a phrase, or an actual question (Why is the sky blue?). Another window shows the three databases that can be searched: The Macropaedia, Micropaedia and Britannica Book of the Year (current edition). These can be selected singly or in any combination by clicking on each one.

After typing in a query, the user presses Enter or clicks on "Go." The window at the bottom of the screen then returns a list of article titles, ranked by relevance to the query (with the most relevant presumed to be at or near the top of the list). The first title is automatically highlighted by the system, and the beginning text of that article, or segment of an article, appears in the top right-hand window. With a click on "Zoom" the text window may be opened so that the text fills the entire screen. Throughout the texts, the key words of the query are highlighted in red so that the user may quickly scan through the text and identify those portions relevant to the query.

Developed by Britannica's technical group, the propriety search software uses natural language querying; users are not required to learn any new command language or protocols. The software coupled with access directly from a hard disk (as opposed to a much slower CD-ROM drive) result in search speeds that are close to instantaneous. Researchers, fact checkers and librarians who have previewed the system are unanimous in their relief that the "great EBB" now provides a means by which searches may be performed speedily and with little training required. Intended to provide significant productivity savings to publishers, BIRS has proved in beta test sites to improve productivity by as much as 75%.

Other Features

The Britannica Instant Research System includes a Merriam Webster dictionary and thesaurus; double-clicking on any word in the article text takes the user immediately to the dictionary definition or thesaurus entry, depending on which the user has selected as the default.

In addition to the Idea Search screen, a user may go directly to title list screens for each database and select titles directly for text display.

A new tool called People, Places and Things allows users to retrieve title lists sorted in various ways.

An electronic desktop feature allows quick navigation between screens and also permits the user to save articles on the desktop for future reference.

The System supports the usual Windows features, including the ability to save articles to a notebook (or to disk) and to print out texts.

What types of questions might be asked? During the demonstration at the Symposium, we asked, "What is the origin of the library?" We were pleased to have the first title on the relevance-ranked list direct us to an article referencing the ancient library at Alexandria. We asked, "What is Chaucer's date of birth?" and the box in the upper right portion of the screen displayed the type of authoritative information we would expect from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Testing the ability of the search engine to deal with searches that would be impossible in a traditional index, we typed in "Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin" and found articles mentioning all three individuals. Scrolling the list of relevance-ranked articles, we saw the words Yalta Conference as one of the titles, and clicked on that to instantly retrieve the text of that article. (The accompanying sample screen, using the query, "Why do leaves change color in autumn?" depicts the interface used in the Instant Research System.)

Someone could well ask if the Britannica Instant Research System is an electronic replacement of the print set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The answer is NO!! It does not contain the graphics. It does not lend itself to browsing or reading in an easy chair. It is literally a different product with a distinct purpose and set of features. Its advantage is in its instant research capacity.

Why was it developed and for whom? Several years ago, a number of textbook publishers were taken to court and heavily fined over the number of errors identified in some of their textbooks. It became obvious to our editorial staff that nearly all of the errors could have been prevented had Encyclopaedia Britannica been used to check the facts in advance of publishing. It was also obvious that the electronic format provided powerful advantages in this regard. The product was tested for a year with a company that provides fact checking services to publishing companies and was evaluated as quadrupling the productivity over existing services. Thus the product was designed for the professional marketplace. As academic and public librarians became aware of the product in its beta stage, they expressed interest in it and we began to see broader applicability for the research system.

BIRS runs under Windows 3.1; the recommended hardware configuration is a 486 PC or compatible, 4 MB RAM, 25 Mhz or better, with a VGA or SVGA monitor and a 1.0 GB hard disk (internal or external), a CD-ROM drive, and a mouse. The system is delivered on two CD-ROMs that are then downloaded by the user to the large hard disk. One disk remains in the CD-ROM player during the system's operation as a copy-protection device.

Even the most serious of researchers cannot help but smile at the instantaneous response to very pedantic questions.