''Academic American Encyclopedia'' is a 21-volume general

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the i ...

encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

published in 1980. It was first produced by Arête Publishing, the American subsidiary of the Dutch publishing company VNU'' Kister's Best Encyclopedias'', 1994 (later acquired by

Nielsen Media Research Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rati ...

in 1999).

Arête Encyclopedia

The initial product, Arête Encyclopedia, was created on a schedule that was too tight resulting in many difficulties. The first Vice President of Editorial, Larry Lustig, came from Encyclopaedia Britannica and found the pressure too great. He was replaced by Michael Reed who came from ''

World Book Encyclopedia The ''World Book Encyclopedia'' is an American encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects. ''World Book'' wa ...

''. Reed asked several times to have the production schedule lengthened to straighten out what had already been produced and assure reasonable time for completion. After six months, with no schedule change, Reed resigned rather than have his name associated with the work.

Grolier Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including '' The Book of Knowledge'' (1910), ''The New Book of Knowledge'' (1966), ''The New Book of Popular Science'' (1972), ''Encyclopedia Americana'' (1945), ''Acad ...

acquired the encyclopedia in 1982. It has also been published under the names ''Grolier Academic Encyclopedia'', ''Grolier International Encyclopedia'', ''Lexicon Universal Encyclopedia'', ''Macmillan Family Encyclopedia'', ''

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 ...

New American Encyclopedia'', and ''Global International Encyclopedia''. An abridged version was known as the ''Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge''. The full text of the encyclopedia was available to 200 homes in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, an ...

in 1980, as part of an experiment sponsored by

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It wa ...

. A year later, the text was available to subscribers of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' Information Bank, the Dow Jones News/Retrieval and

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

. Arête Publishing's interactive version, including illustrations, video and audio stored on videodisk was shown at the

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

Book Fair A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

in 1982.

Electronic version

published the text-only 1985

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both com ...

''The Electronic Encyclopedia from Grolier'', based on the ''Academic American Encyclopedia'', which comprised 30,000 entries and 9 million words. In 1990, when it was called ''The New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia'' (1988–1991), still pictures were added.Lewis, Peter H. "PERSONAL COMPUTERS; CD-ROM for the Common Man," ''The New York Times'', November 28, 1989.
/ref> This evolved into the 1992 ''The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia'', later named the ''

Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia Grolier was one of the largest American publishers of general encyclopedias, including ''The Book of Knowledge'' (1910), ''The New Book of Knowledge'' (1966), ''The New Book of Popular Science'' (1972), ''Encyclopedia Americana'' (1945), ''Acade ...

''. The

version features a search function and offers the complete text of the ''Academic American Encyclopedia'', including

illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in print and digital published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video ...

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now create ...

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

maps,

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

and

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...

s. In co-operation with

The Software Toolworks The Software Toolworks (commonly abbreviated as Toolworks) was an American software and video game developer based in Novato, California. The company was founded by Walt Bilofsky in 1980 out of his Sherman Oaks garage, which he converted into ...

company was created ''The Software Toolworks Illustrated Encyclopedia''.

References

External links

Grolier online
{{Italic title English-language encyclopedias American encyclopedias 1980 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias 21st-century encyclopedias