The creators of the electronic encyclopedia are preparing for its full launch

Over time, it should become better than Britannica and Brockhaus.

A full launch of the electronic version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia (BRE) is scheduled for mid-May this year. This was announced at a meeting of the Public Council under the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation by the editor-in-chief of the encyclopedia Sergey Kravets.

As it became known to MK, the encyclopedia created on behalf of the President of Russia is currently operating in test mode, its trial run took place in May last year. At the moment, the total volume of the electronic BDT is 25620 articles, these are 2900 author’s sheets, an analogue of 27-28 full-length paper volumes. In comparison, the latest paper version of the BDT, completed in 2018, included 35 volumes. However, the plan for the development of the electronic encyclopedia has been developed until 2025, by which time its creators plan to prepare 100 thousand articles, and this is already approximately 120 volumes of the encyclopedia. And right now you can launch a full-fledged “school encyclopedia”: the BDT developers have prepared 5 thousand articles synchronized with the school curriculum. Now the possibility of its creation is being discussed with the Ministry of Education.

According to the developers, the modern version of BDT ranks third among the world’s encyclopedias, the first is the English-language Britannica (the first electronic version was released in 1994 on CD) and the German Brockhaus (the electronic version has been published since 2002). The authors of the Russian encyclopedia emphasize that they have every chance of taking first place, because in their work they take into account the experience of their predecessors. And technology has recently stepped forward a lot, which allows you to create a more perfect product. Each article contains many external and cross-references, any number of media materials of all existing types can be connected to them. “Besides, we have something that our colleagues did not have — an opportunity has been created for the transition from quotations and titles of works to their first publications,” Sergey Kravets noted.

The advantage will be not only in technology, but also in content. According to domestic developers, the authors of Britannica abandoned the encyclopedic method of production, which is based on the principle of joint responsibility for the content of the article by its author and editor. The result is a huge number of errors in new articles. As for BDT, the preparation of any article for it takes place in 60 stages, which reduces the possibility of error to a minimum. In addition, the most up-to-date data is collected in the domestic electronic encyclopedia.

In addition, the authors emphasize that the encyclopedia is by no means an analogue of Wikipedia, in which there is too much inaccurate and unverified information.