Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

The Boston Globe has an article today by Eric Ferkenhoff about the Encyclopedia Britannica's response to Wikipedia and other online resources. It seems to be primarily a PR effort: After a lapse of 10 years, it's re-appointing a 15-person advisory board that will meet twice a year to "fine-tune" editorial content. Or, as board member Wendy Doniger (a professor at U of Chicago's Divinity School) puts it in a phrase she probably regrets already: "We're deciding what people are going to think."

The board is more diverse than before, actually including three women (wow!) and members from all the inhabited continents except Australia*:

''The world has changed," Doniger said. ''There has to be far more attention to the Third World, to women, to alternative political groups, to alternative literature, and things and ideas that weren't covered by the old Britannica, which was a white male thing."

All to the good.