[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.