Encyclopedia (also encyclopaedia, cyclopedia or cyclopaedia, from Greek *enkyklios paideia*, roughly "general education") is a large [book](book.md) (or a series of books) providing structured summary of wide knowledge in one or many fields of knowledge (such as [mathematics](math.md), [history](history.md), engineering, general knowledge etc.), usually structured as a collection of alphabetically ordered articles on terms used in the field. Paper encyclopedias are oftentimes printed in several volumes as the amount of contained information is too great for a single book (in large ones you may even see one or two volumes dedicated ONLY for the [index](index.md)). The largest and most famous encyclopedia to date is the online [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) created by volunteers in [free culture](free_culture.md) spirit, however Wikipedia suffers from significant issues such as [censorship](censorship.md), high political propaganda and low quality of writing, therefore it is important to also stay interested in other encyclopedias such as Britannica, Americana or [LRS wiki](lrs_wiki.md).
**Encyclopedias are [awesome](awesome.md)**, get as many of them as you can, especially the printed ones -- they are usually relatively cheap (especially second hand books) and provide an ENORMOUS amount of information, FOREVER (no one can cancel your physically owned paper book, you will retain it even after the [collapse](collapse.md) when such books will become practically your only source of human knowledge). Also remember, paper books are still of much higher quality than online resources such as [Wikipedia](wikipedia.md) -- even if they lose in terms of shear volume, they make up in quality of writing and still many times contain information that's not available online, and the older ones are more objective and trustworthy, considering the decline of [free speech](free_speech.md) online. Shorter articles may also do a better job at providing overall summary of a topic and filtering out less important information, as opposed to a gigantic Wikipedia article. Furthermore even if such a book isn't [free as in freedom](free_culture.md), the knowledge, information and data contained in it is in the [public domain](public_domain.md) as such things cannot (yet) be owned, therefore it is possible to legally paraphrase the information into a new source which we may make public domain itself (however watch out to not merely copy-paste texts from encyclopedias as text CAN be [copyrighted](copyright.md), as well as e.g. the mere selection of which facts to include; always be very careful).
Since an encyclopedia will typically focus on encompassing wide knowledge, as the other side of the coin its disadvantage will also oftentimes be shallowness, it will go into greater depth only on very important topics, although very big encyclopedias largely eliminate this issue and go fairly deep on all subjects; encyclopedias specialized on some particular subject can also afford to provide in-depth knowledge.
{ A favorite pastime of mine is looking up the same term in different encyclopedias and comparing them -- this can help get to the essence of actually understanding the term, as well as revealing censorship and different views of the authors. ~drummyfish }
Great nerds read encyclopedias linearly from start to finish just like a normal book, which may help expand one's knowledge as well as ignite curiosity in new things and spot some cool interesting facts. { And yet bigger nerds write their own encyclopedias. ~drummyfish }
**Similar terms:** encyclopedias, which also used to be called **cyclopedias** in the past, are similar to **dictionaries** and these types of books often overlap (many encyclopedias call themselves dictionaries); the main difference is that a dictionary focuses on providing linguistic information and generally has shorter term definitions, while encyclopedias have longer articles (which however limits their total number, i.e. encyclopedias will usually prefer quality over quantity). Encyclopedias are also a subset of so called **reference works**, i.e. works that serve to provide [information](information.md) and reference to it (other kinds of reference works being e.g. world maps, tabulated values or [API](api.md) references). A **universal/general** encyclopedia is one that focuses on human knowledge at wide, as opposed to an encyclopedia that focuses on one specific field of knowledge. **Compendium** can be seen almost as a synonym to encyclopedia, with encyclopedias perhaps usually being more general and extensive. **Almanac** is also similar to encyclopedia, more focusing on tabular data. **Micropedia** is another term, sometimes used to denote a smaller encyclopedia (one edition of Britannica came with a micropedia as well as a larger macropedia).
**What is the best letter in an encyclopedia?** If you are super nerdy, you may start to search for your favorite starting letter -- this if [fun](fun.md) and may also help you e.g. decide which volume of your encyclopedia to take with you when traveling. Which letter is best depends on many things, e.g. the language of the encyclopedia, its size, your area of interest and so on. Assuming [English](english.md) and topics that would be interesting to the readers of [LRS wiki](lrs_wiki.md), the best letter is most likely C -- it is the second most common starting letter in dictionaries, has a great span and includes essential and interesting terms such as [computer](computer.md), [C](c.md) programming language, [cat](cat.md), [communism](communism.md), [capitalism](capitalism.md), [chess](chess.md), [christianity](christianity.md), [collapse](collpase.md), [CPU](cpu.md), [color](color.md), [culture](culture.md), [copyleft](copyleft.md), [compiler](compiler.md), [creative commons](creative_commons.md), [cryptography](cryptography.md), [copyright](copyright.md), [car](car.md), [cancer](cancer.md), [cellular automata](cellular_automaton.md), [consumerism](consumerism.md), [cosine](cosine.md), [Chomsky](chomsky.md), [CIA](cia.md), [cybernetics](cybernetics.md), [cracking](cracking.md), [chaos](chaos.md), [carbon](carbon.md), [curvature](curvature.md), [chemistry](chemistry.md), [censorship](censorship.md) and others. As close second comes S, the most frequent letter in dictionaries, with terms such as [Stallman](rms.md), [science](science.md), [shader](shader.md), [semiconductor](semiconductor.md), [silicon](silicon.md), [software](software.md), [sound](sound.md), [socialism](socialism.md), [state](state.md), [selflessness](selflessness.md), [speech recognition](speech_recognition.md), [steganography](steganography.md), [square root](square_root.md), [sudoku](sudoku.md), [suicide](kys.md), [speedrun](speedrun.md), [space](space.md), [star](star.md), [Sun](sun.md), [sine](sin.md), [Soviet union](ussr.md), [schizophrenia](schizo.md), [set](set.md), [suckless](suckless.md), [shit](shit.md), [sex](sex.md) and others. { This is based on a list I made where I assigned points to each letter. The letters that follow after C and S are P, M, A, E, T, L, R, F, D, G, I, B, H, U, N, W, V, J, O, K, Q, Z, Y, X. ~drummyfish }
Here is a list of notable encyclopedias, focused on general knowledge English language ones. The most notable ones are in bold. Also check out existing encyclopedias in other languages that you speak, we can't list those here.
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia| 2002 | proprietary | 1 vol. 2000p| 28K | nice, short descriptions, condensed from the main multivol. Brit., piratable pdf |
| Collier's New Encyclopedia | 1921 | PD (old) | 10 vol. | | NOT TO BE CONFUSED with Collier's Encyclopedia (different one), digitized on Wikisource (txt) |
| Columbia Encyclopedia |1935...| proprietary | 1 vol. ~3Kp | ~50K | high quality, lots of information { Read the 1993 edition, it's super nice. ~drummyfish } |
| Encyclopedia Dramatica |2004...| PD (CC0) | online | 15K | informal/fun/"offensive" but valuable info (on society, tech, ...), basically no censorship, no propaganda |
|[Infogalactic](infogalactic.md) |2016...| CC BY-SA | online | 2M | Wikipedia fork, no SJW censorship, FOR PROFIT (you can buy article control lol), can't make accounts |
| [Leftypedia](leftypedia.md) |2020...| GFDL | online | ~200 | Leftist encyclopedia, currently NOT littered by SJWs, writing about all branches of the "left" |
|Microsoft [Encarta](encarta.md) |...2009| proprietary | electronic | 62K | Micro$oft enc., low quality articles (errors), MS propaganda (no free software etc. lol), is on archive.org|
| **[Wikipedia](wikipedia.md)** |2001...| CC BY-SA | online | 6M | largest and most famous, EXTREME PSEUDOLEFTIST CENSORSHIP AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA, free culture |
| World Almanac and Book of Facts|1868...| some PD (old) | 1 vol. | | interesting and useful information, data and facts from old to new age, US-centered |
| **The World Book** |1917...| proprietary | 22 vol. | 17K | best selling print enc., large, high quality but for younger audience, US propaganda (anticommunism etc.) |
