[Summary]
The first reference encyclopedias and dictionaries available
online stemmed from print versions. Britannica.com was available
in December 1999 as the web version of the 32-volume Encyclopaedia
Britannica, first for free and then for a fee. The French-language
WebEncyclo from Editions Atlas was available at the same time, for
free, as well as the Encyclopaedia Universalis, for a fee. The
first major online dictionaries also stemmed from print versions,
for example the free Merriam-Webster Online launched in 1996, that
included the Webster Dictionary, the Webster Thesaurus, and other
tools. The French-language “Dictionnaire Universel Francophone en
Ligne “ from Hachette was available for free in 1997. The online
version of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was
available in March 2000 for a fee. Designed directly for the web,
the Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique (GDT) was launched in
September 2000 in Quebec as the largest free French-English
terminology dictionary, and quickly praised by linguists worldwide.
***
The first reference encyclopedias and dictionaries available
online stemmed from print versions.
# Encyclopedias
Britannica.com was launched in December 1999 as the digital
equivalent of the 32 volumes of the 15th edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica. The website was available for free, as a
complement to the print and CD-ROM versions for sale, with a
selection of articles from 70 magazines, a guide to the best
websites, a selection of books, etc., all searchable through a
single search engine. In September 2000, the site was among the
top 100 websites in the world. In July 2001, the website, not free
anymore, could be searched for a monthly or annual fee. In 2009,
Britannica.com opened its website to external contributors, with
registration required to write and edit articles.
Launched by Editions Atlas in December 1999 and stemming from a
print encyclopedia, Webencyclo was the first main French-language
online encyclopedia available for free. It was searchable by
keyword, topic and media (i.e. maps, links, photos, illustrations).
A call for papers invited specialists in a given topic to become
external contributors and submit articles in a section called
"Webencyclo Contributif". Later on, a free registration was
required to use the online encyclopedia.
Launched at the same time, the website of the print French-
language Encyclopedia Universalis included 28,000 articles by
4,000 contributors, available for an annual subscription fee, with
a number of articles available for free.
# Dictionaries
Merriam-Webster, a well-known publisher of dictionaries, launched
in 1996 the website "Merriam-Webster Online: The Language Center"
to give free access to online resources stemming from several
print reference works: Webster Dictionary, Webster Thesaurus,
Webster's Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International
Business Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive
vocabulary quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot
new words). The website’s goal was also to help track down
definitions, spellings, pronunciations, synonyms, vocabulary
exercises, and other key facts about words and language.
The "Dictionnaire Universel Francophone en Ligne" (Universal
French-Language Online Dictionary) was the web version of the
"Dictionnaire Universel Francophone", published by Hachette in
partnership with AUPELF-UREF (which later became AUF: Agence
Universitaire de la Francophonie - University Agency of
Francophony). The dictionary included not only standard French but
also the French-language words and expressions used worldwide.
French was spoken by 500 million people in 50 countries. As a side
remark, English and French are the only official and/or cultural
languages widely spread on five continents.
The online version (for a subscription fee) of the 20-volume
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) was launched in March 2000 by
Oxford University Press (OUP), followed by a quarterly update with
around 1,000 new or revised entries. Two years later, Oxford
University Press launched Oxford Reference Online (ORO), a
comprehensive encyclopedia designed directly for the web and also
available for a subscription fee. Its 60,000 webpages and one
million entries could represent the equivalent of 100 print
encyclopedias.
# The GDT from Quebec
With 3 million terms related to industry, science and commerce,
the GDT (Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique - Main Terminological
Dictionary) was the largest French-English online terminology
dictionary. The GDT was designed directly for the web by OQLF
(Office Québécois de la Langue Française - Quebecois Office of the
French Language) and launched in September 2000 as a free service.
The GDT was a technological challenge, and the result of a
partnership between OQLF, author of the dictionary, and Semantix,
a company specialized in linguistic software. The GDT had 1.3
million individual visits during the first month, with peaks of
60,000 visits per day, which certainly contributed to better
translations. The database was then maintained by Convera Canada,
with 3.5 million visits per month in February 2003. A revamped
version of the GDT went online in March 2003, with the database
maintained by OQLF itself, and the addition of Latin as a third
language.