PRESS: Russian govt to launch national encyclopedic portal

MOSCOW, Aug 30 (PRIME) -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has summoned a working group to create a domestic encyclopedic portal, which could compete with popular free encyclopedia Wikipedia as its articles will be scientifically proofread, business daily Kommersant reported Tuesday.

Costs of launching the encyclopedic portal are still unclear, but its authors believe it could start paying back thanks to charging subscription fees.

The working group is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko and comprises people from the communications, education and culture ministries, among others.

Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director of Wikipedia RU, said it is a right decision to switch to an electronic form. “The point of an encyclopedia is to quickly get a small piece of information. It makes no sense if one has to go to the library for it,” he said.

“The Russian encyclopedia is an heir of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which is known to have things closely knit with the ideology. Wikipedia is compiled by about 2 million people with absolutely different mindsets. They control each other to make sure that only facts are left in stories without any political interpretations.”

The government earlier decided to stop printing the Great Russian Encyclopedia on paper and turn it into an electronic form. The encyclopedia publication was ordered by President Vladimir Putin in 2002, and the first volume was issued two years later.

At first, the government financed the project through grants and then via the Culture Ministry, which purchased the books for municipal libraries for some 100 million rubles per year. The ministry threatened to cut funding in 2014 until an electronic version pops up.

(65.0810 rubles – U.S. $1)

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