The ''Grote Spectrum Encyclopedie'' ("Great Spectrum Encyclopedia") (published by

Het Spectrum Uitgeverij Lannoo Groep is a Belgian publishing group, based in Tielt, with assets in Belgium and the Netherlands. Its Belgian subsidiary is Uitgeverij Lannoo. Its Dutch subsidiary is LannooMeulenhoff. Over the years Lannoo evolved from Catholic ...

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

between 1974 and 1980) is a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

encyclopedia which treats subjects in 5000 large and comprehensive articles (like the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...

'') with a clear accent on the

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

Description

Encyclopedia contains about 5000 large detailed articles on various topics with an emphasis on social sciences. All illustrations and design are colored, which is new for this kind of

encyclopedias An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by artic ...

, published in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. The editor-in-chief of the encyclopaedia in 1972-1974 was Inez van Eyck, who in 1971-1972 also was preparing articles for the publication. The circulation of the encyclopedia, as a rule, was sold with the delivery of volumes to the house. The total cost was 2500 guilders . As a rule, the possibility of buying on credit was used, the payment of which amounted to 60 guilders per month for a full five years. The rise of new storage media in the 1990s (

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 computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

) halted the plans for a second edition of the ''Grote Spectrum Encyclopedie''. An actualised supplement did appear in 2002.

Composition

The encyclopedia is functionally illustrated and consists of 20 volumes A-Z, and four index volumes with references to lemmas within the treated subjects. The fourth index volume also contains a comprehensive bibliography (which is not included in the articles themselves). A supplement (volume 25) appeared in 1984. Encyclopedias in Dutch 1974 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias 21st-century encyclopedias {{encyclopedia-stub