freedom of intellectual development. The problem of "datedracss" is analyzed via the history of the editions of the Britatinica.1-iAVE lately joined the company of e.,,cyclopedists after a career in daily journalism, a transition that seems to have astounded some of my former colleagues as well as those academics who look with suspicion upon editors who bear only honorary degrees. Yet my appointment, whatever else may be said against it, does no violence to the tradition of /~-//<7/~/r.~ the oldest and largest of the English language encyclopedias. For more than a century the chair I inherited has been shaped by the backsides of men who apprenticed in the newspapcr shops of Great Britain and the United States.This condition says something fundamental, but not always understood, about encyclopedias. The academic world is ~ritalllllc~a'S primary resource, and most of its 9,000 contributors are scholars. But the encyclopedia is edited for laymen. It is conceived as a continuing link between the academic and lay worlds, a work of factual reference, certainly, but also a major instrument of popular education.These two worlds provide a rcmarkable system of checks and balances for the editor who must operate somewhere between them. The layman who can't find the information he wants, or c:1I1't understand it when he does tir~d it, has a justifiable complaint. The contributor who suspects a lapse of scholarship in the interest of popularization is capable of outrage, and likely to be highly vocal. Robert VI. Hutchins, the chairman of l3rit~alrllic-a's board of editors, has offered a neat summary of the encyclopedic dilemma : &dquo;A brain surgeon will not look up the articles on brain surgery in order to prepare for a prefrontal lobotomy. But if he has access to the set Ile will turn to the articles out of natural curiosityand on the basis of his own expert knowledge he will form his judgment as to the quality of the remainder.&dquo;This is in fact a valid test, and one I recommend.If an encyclopedia deals competently with subject matter familiar to the reader it is a reasonable assumption that it will instruct, him reliably in un-familiar areas. It will not, of course, repeat all the expert knows, or needs to know. An encyclopedia is not, and should not be, a textbook-a fact which seems to elude the single-minded who fault the work for its failure to include esoteric matter of their specialized interest.7'he i~IL'''hll)ll('S of Sur'l.'i'l.'al B!-Ilalrlllc'lJ, despite its size and resources, is constantly besct by limitations of time and space. Its 40,000,000 words, divided among 2~ volumes, are under the constant ministration of a full-time editorial staff of more than 200, divided among the central operation in Chicago, the London office which also deals with Continental contributors, and a forward planning staff in Santa Barbara. The editors are supported by more than 200 academic advisers, plus standing committees at the Universities of Chicago, Oxford, Cambridge, London and Toronto.The Britcrlrlric-a editorial operat...