Before text, societies relied on oral traditions to produce and maintain the community's knowledge. This, by necessity, was a cooperative endeavor, with different members holding expertise in certain areas. Foster Stockwell describes how individuals who were able to master an exceptionally great amount of useful knowledge became naturally selected leaders. He writes, “ A group consciously or unconsciously chooses its leader because it wants the fullest benefit of that person's powers.”¹ In order to properly contextualize the impact of both encyclopedias and Wikipedia, a history of oral knowledge gathering and transmission will be necessary.

The encyclopedia section will include a history of early efforts which date back thousands of years in both non-Western and Western cultures. Cruciform tablets from Mesopotamia dating to the 600s B.C. represent one of the earliest attempts to codify knowledge in an encyclopedic fashion. The Greeks are also known to have written encyclopedias, although none have survived. On the other hand, a Roman text, Pliny the Elder's Natural History was used into the sixteenth century. And for their part, the Chinese produced a 745-volume compilation. The diversity of these examples elucidates the human urge to gather knowledge in a single place for study.

However, the great focus of this section will be on the most famous encyclopedia this side of World Book, the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot. The value of examining Encyclopédie lies in its place in history as a work which upended existing knowledge source and power hierarchies. Written in pre-Revolutionary France, the Encyclopédie contested the control both church and state exerted over the production and dissemination of knowledge and became a work exemplary of the ideals of the Enlightenment. As Philipp Blom notes:

What makes it the most significant event in the entire intellectual history of the Enlightenment is the particular constellation of politics, economics, stubbornness, heroism, and revolutionary ideas that prevailed, for the first time ever, against the accumulated determination of Church and Crown, of all established forces in France taken together, to become a triumph of free thought, secular principle, and private enterprise.²

Closely examining the history of the Encyclopédie will highlight just how powerful a tool like an encyclopedia can be. Both the Catholic Church and the regency of France recognized the power of knowledge, and the potential disruptions to the strangulating status quo they maintained such a work might have. Perhaps they had good reason to be worried. It would not be long after its publication that many of them would be losing their heads.

More recently, there has been another major revolution in encyclopedic endeavors. Wikipedia was founded in 2001 as a complement to the expert written and now defunct Nupedia, and has grown into one of the most visited sites on the web. Wikipedia represents in many ways a combination of the constructs of orally maintained knowledge and the textual encyclopedic model. However, it is more empowering to both the individual and the community than either of the previous incarnations. Wikipedia encourages the communal production of encyclopedic knowledge with the ability to reach massive audiences. While the ultimate impact of the Wikipedia model on scholarship is yet to be seen, its presence is too great to ignore.

Encyclopedias seem to be a natural candidate to be transitioned to hypertext. Long before new media, encyclopedias included cross references in their entries, directing the reader to other entries of related information. Hypertext employs this same referential principle. Of course if the reader followed the trail throughout the encyclopedia, they would soon be surrounded by a dozen or more volumes, along with various bookmarks and notes trying to maintain order. Hypertext streamlines and facilitates this process, allowing easier and more efficient usage. In utilizing this technology, Wikipedia further alters the encyclopedic model.

The goal in each of these narratives will be to highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of each model with regards to its ability to both educate and empower the larger community. While the structure of oral cultures encouraged communal building processes, it also often assigned a disproportionately high value to individuals with a superior ability to retain information. While I am sure most of us with educational aspirations would not mind recognition for such a skill beyond the occasional “egghead” taunt, it is easy to see how such a limited localization could be easily exploited to the detriment of the community. Moreover, the transmission of such knowledge is limited by the possibility of being able to speak with the expert, and how much he or she is willing to share at any given time. Encyclopedias both expanded and narrowed the gathering process. While the community aspects largely disappeared, the expert pool increases slightly. Works of such breadth and comprehension required the efforts of many leading scholars. And by publishing a text, a work such as Encyclopédie was able to disseminate information to a much wider audience. Wikipedia has been able to blend the commons-based peer production of oral cultures with the widespread dissemination of text encyclopedias. By allowing users to directly edit the encyclopedia, they have removed the power of the knowledge from the hands of the experts and into the hands of the populace. Granted, since Wikipedia only allows for the use of secondary material, there is still a reliance on accepted scholarship, however, since this is often contested territory itself, it leads to an active, participating, collaborative community.

This site would be geared toward students of varying ages. I would hope to make it accessible to students as low as middle school, yet also potentially useful to undergraduates. Given the variety of educational experiences people have, this does not seem as far fetched as it sounds. Also, since this tries to closely examine the impact a new medium is having, it could be a useful resource for others with a similar interest.