Transnational character of web encyclopaedias

Abstract

In the past three centuries of modern encyclopaedias, some published works were usually directed towards a specific area (market) where they were distributed (sold), which largely depended on the language in which they were written. In spite of a declared objectivity and comprehensiveness, the choice of themes relevant to the treatment, as well as the scope and the method of that treatment depended on that area. Therefore, most of the traditional encyclopaedic works have, to a lesser or greater degree, a national character. On the other hand, by publishing encyclopaedic works on the Internet as a world-wide communication web, because of the essence of that media, boundaries of a specific area of distribution become significantly “softer”, and those works receive a transnational character. As confirmation to this thesis, one can look at statistical analyses of the number of visits to web encyclopaedias of the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. 25% of users from abroad visited the Portal of Knowledge (Portal znanja) in the given period of a single year, while the latest research of the number of visits to the Prolexis Encyclopaedia (Proleksis enciklopedija) shows 31% of international users. Among them, most were from countries that share a linguistic closeness with Croatia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Such data is unattainable for printed works, so the editors of web encyclopaedias have to take into account the international structure of their users. Moreover, taking into account improving qualities of web translators, it is to be expected that linguistic closeness, as the remaining limiting factor of the circle of web encyclopaedias users, is slowly losing its significance, while the circle of international users of encyclopaedias is still expanding. For that reason, as well as for often apostrophizing encyclopaedias as an organized collection of information which is suitable for the basis of the development of next-generation web, the so-called semantic web, web encyclopaedias have a significant perspective of becoming platforms for international and transnational cultural connecting.