Academic American Encyclopedia is a 21-volume general English-languageencyclopedia published in 1980. It was first produced by Arête Publishing, the American subsidiary of the Dutch publishing company VNU[1] (later acquired by Nielsen Media Research in 1999).
Arête Encyclopedia
The initial product, Arête Encyclopedia, was created on a schedule that was too tight resulting in many difficulties. The first Vice President of Editorial, Larry Lustig, came from Encyclopaedia Britannica and found the pressure too great. He was replaced by Michael Reed who came from World Book Encyclopedia. Reed asked several times to have the production schedule lengthened to straighten out what had already been produced and assure reasonable time for completion. After six months, with no schedule change, Reed resigned rather than have his name associated with the work.
Grolier acquired the encyclopedia in 1982. It has also been published under the names Grolier Academic Encyclopedia, Grolier International Encyclopedia, Lexicon Universal Encyclopedia, Macmillan Family Encyclopedia, Barnes & Noble New American Encyclopedia, and Global International Encyclopedia.[1]
An abridged version was known as the Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge.[1]
Arête Publishing's interactive version, including illustrations, video and audio stored on videodisk was shown at the FrankfurtBook Fair in 1982.[2]
Electronic version
Grolier published the text-only 1985 CD-ROMThe Electronic Encyclopedia from Grolier, based on the Academic American Encyclopedia, which comprised 30,000 entries and 9 million words.[3][4] In 1990, when it was called The New Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia (1988–1991), still pictures were added. This evolved into the 1992 The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, later named the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.[1]