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Rh converted the Ninth into the Tenth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, made it imperative to extend this limited experiment to the making of an entirely new edition. By this means a new value might be given to a work which aimed not merely at providing a storehouse of facts, but expounding all knowledge as part of an ordered system. For the problem here was bound up with the question of the date of publication to a unique degree. In some other sorts of book the fact that successive volumes appear at certain intervals of time only affects the convenience of the purchaser—as, for instance, in the case of the Cambridge Modern History; the various volumes do not cover the same field or touch the same materials. But in an encyclopædia it is only the alphabetization of the headings which causes them to fall in distinct volumes, and the accident of position separates the treatment of the same or closely related subjects in such a way that, if they are discussed from the point of view of widely different dates, the organic unity of the work is entirely lost. Thanks to the enterprising provision of capital, and the co-operation of a far-sighted business management, it was possible to start the preparation of the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica with the knowledge that it would be published as a whole at one date. The separate volumes, whatever their number, would no longer represent so many lapses of time and so many distinct units in executive conception, but merely mechanical divisions for convenience in handling. And arrangements were made so that the printing of the whole edition should eventually take hardly more time than had been required for the printing and correcting of a single volume under the old system.

The opportunity thus provided was in many ways more appropriate to the making of an entirely new work than to the revision of an old one. For the Ninth Edition was wanting in precisely that character of interdependence in all its part which could now be given to the various related articles. Moreover, experience had shown that, as compared with other encyclopædias of less ambitious scope, not intended for systematic study or continuous reading, its arrangement as a work of reference had defects which resulted in some injustice being done to its merits as a series of individual contributions to learning. There was no reason why both these purposes should not be served, and attention be paid to distributing the material under the much larger number of headings which are required for rapid and easy reference, when once it was possible to ignore the particular order in which the subjects were treated. Since none of the work was printed or published until the whole of it was ready, new headings could always be introduced with their appropriate matter, according as the examination of what was written under another heading revealed omissions which showed that some related subject required explanation on its own account, or according as the progress of time up to the year of publication involved the emergence of new issues, to which previously no separate reference would have been expected. The execution of the Eleventh Edition, planned on uniform lines as a single organism, and thus admitting of continual improvement in detail, irrespectively of the distribution of matter under this or that letter of the alphabet, could proceed in all its parts pari passu, the various articles being kept open for revision or rewriting, so as to represent the collective knowledge and the contemporary standpoint of the date at which the whole was issued.

This new design involved the maintenance, during all the years of preparation, of an active collaboration among a vast body of contributors. The formal structure of the Ninth Edition necessarily disappeared, leaving only its component parts as building material for incorporation in the new edifice to such degree as examination might prove its adaptability. The site—in this case the whole field of knowledge—was mapped out afresh under the advice of specialist departmental advisers, who, in providing for the occupation of the different areas, co-operated with a central editorial staff, comprising many members, each of whom was responsible to the Editor-in-Chief for a particular section of the work. In this manner what, it is hoped, is a more complete articulation of subjects was effected, while co-operation between the contributors who dealt with each homogeneous department of knowledge was combined with the concentration in editorial direction, which alone could make the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica an organic unit.