Enter the Encyclopedia
The Green Links are Back!
Anime News Network is pleased to announce that we will soon be launching our Anime encyclopedia. The Anime encyclopedia is a project that we've been working on for close to a year now.
Before I begin to talk about the Encyclopedia I would like to publicly thank Daniel DeLorme for the huge amount of time he has put into designing the Encyclopedia over the past couple of months. The Encyclopedia's contributors section credits a number of people, but without a doubt the most important person's name is missing. In addition to the Encyclopedia, Dan has also created our review & feature scripts as well as improved pretty much every other script that we use, but without a doubt the Encyclopedia is his tour de force. Thank you Dan.
What is an Anime Encyclopedia?
A single source of a huge amount of unbiased and definitive information about Anime. This Anime Encyclopedia will include production details on a huge number of Anime (ultimately our goal is to have information on every anime ever produced), Anime staff, Anime cast, as well as a lexicon of definitions related to Anime. Other additions to the encyclopedia may come at a later time, but that's all for now... enough no?
How serious are we?
This is not one of those pipe dream projects where some dreamer has a great idea but not nearly enough clout to pull it off. For starters, the Encyclopedia already contains over 700 Anime Titles (including almost every Anime licensed in North America) and 3500 people.... we're serious.
What Makes us different from all the other sources of similar information?
There aren't any similar sources of information. In print there are two very good compendiums of information about Anime titles, these are Protoculture's Anime a Guide to Japanese Animation (1958-1988) and Stonebridge Press's Anime Encyclopedia. Both of these are excellent compendiums of information, but on a different medium. Print has numerous advantages over a web-based encyclopedia, you can take it on the bus with you, sit down in a comfortable chair or in bed and read... But at the same time, a web-based encyclopedia offers the advantages of being able to link one word in one article, to a definition, it can be constantly updated without needing a re-print and it's free. A complete, objective comparison of print media to online media is not possible, and regardless of what the digerati like to believe, print media still has its benefits and will be around for a long time. Anime and the Anime Encyclopedia are the best-printed references available in the English language, our hope is to match and supercede their level of quality in an online format. There are also a number of other online resources, but there is yet to be a definitive and complete source of all the pieces of information online, so rather than need to sift through a dozen or more websites, some of which are not frequently updated, or may not be reliable, our hope is to offer the first complete Anime encyclopedia online.
Obviously the work isn't done yet, with just over 700 anime in the encyclopedia we've barely scratched the surface of Anime, but we're working on it. And we hope you'll visit the encyclopedia (starting with the letter from our encyclopedist) and find it useful. Perhaps you'll even choose to contribute some information of your own.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/.
Thank you,
Christopher Macdonald
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