The first batch of entries -- on "New Zealanders" -- for the online Encyclopedia of New Zealand are now available, and the website seems to fulfil its promise and potential.
Until now, the most comprehensive Encyclopaedia of New Zealand was a three-volume 1966 set. It was well-written and broad-ranging, but dated for anything after the 1960s. A one-volume Encyclopedia was published in 1983, and many will be remembered it for its colorful cover, and primary school style brevity. The one-volume Bateman seems to be well represented in American university libraries, giving Americans the unfortunate impression that a country of several million people with some notable events in its past (women's suffrage, the highest death rate of any combatant nation in WWI ...) and a stunning natural history, could be adequately summed up in 640 pages.
Kudos to the New Zealand government for not trying to make money on making information about New Zealand known to the world. (If only, their statistical agency had the same policies ... ). Although the full Encyclopedia will not be complete until 2012, the web publication will allow people access to topical areas as they are completed.
The other excellent thing the project has done is make the 1966 encyclopaedia available online.
Some things change slowly, if at all, like the weather in Wellington ... it is still amazing to me that I grew up in a place where the variation in temperature over the year was less than the variation in a week in Minneapolis.
Posted by robe0419 at February 21, 2005 03:00 PM | TrackBack