n elusive. Archivists and
curators worked with RLG to create an automated format for these
collections. In 1998, there were 500,000 records available in RLIN for
archival collections located throughout North America. These records
described many collections by personal name, organization, subject, and
format.

RLIN also hosted the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), an
invaluable research tool for scholars in English culture, language, and
literature. This file provided extensive descriptions and holdings
information for letterpress materials printed in UK or any of its
dependencies in any language, from the beginnings of print to 1800 - as
well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world.
Produced by the ESTC editorial offices at the University of California,
Riverside, and the British Library, in partnership with the American
Antiquarian Society and over 1,600 libraries worldwide, the file was
updated and expanded daily. ESTC served as a comprehensive bibliography
of the hand-press era and as a census of surviving copies. ESTC
included 420,000 records as of June 1998, from the beginnings of print
(1473) through the 18th century - including materials ranging from
Shakespeare and Greek New Testaments to anonymous ballads, broadsides,
songs, advertisements and other ephemera.

2007: CITIZENDIUM

[Overview]

Citizendium was launched in October 2006 as a pilot project to build a
new encyclopedia, at the initiative of Larry Sanger, who was the
cofounder of Wikipedia (with Jimmy Wales) in January 2001, but resigned
later on over policy and content quality issues. Citizendium - which
stands for a "citizen's compendium of everything" - is a wiki project
open to public collaboration, but combining "public participation with
gentle expert guidance." The project is experts-led, not experts-only.
Contributors use their own names, not anonymous pseudonyms, and they
are guided by expert editors. "Editors will be able to make content
decisions in their areas of specialization, but otherwise working
shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary authors." (Larry Sanger, Toward a
New Compendium of Knowledge, September 2006) Constables make sure the
rules are respected. Citizendium was launched on March 25, 2007, with
1,100 articles, 820 authors and 180 editors.

2007: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

[Overview]

Launched in May 2007, the Encyclopedia of Life is a global scientific
effort to document all known specie