This article presents the opposing opinions of Dean Shareski and Carol Ann K. Winkler regarding the collaborative, anonymous collections of online information, such as Wikipedia. Dean Shareski, an educational consultant with the Moose Jaw Public School Division (Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada), contends that Wikipedia might be the best example of…

Discusses the information database Britannica Online. Topics include compact discs versus online feeds; database delivery via the Internet; use of technology such as hyperlink, graphics, audio, and video; Britannica's search engine architecture; search options; user reactions, and costs. (AEF)

Cites major U.S. encyclopedia publishers interested in developing machine-readable versions and suggests design possibilities for accessing encyclopedia databases. Full text searching, searching by fields, and sorting on fields are presented as techniques that provide online systems with significant advantages over print. There are five…

Discusses the use of microcomputers as communication devices and presents features of several national bibliographic networks, together with examples of searches for information of interest to academics. The status of electronic publishing is discussed and differences between national and local area networks are described. (Author)