Wikipedia is a tough competitor to the famous traditional hard copy version of the encyclopedia published by Dorlink Kindersley publishing inc. The advantage of Wikipedia is that the input comes from users who are experts in their own area.  It is a cost effective solution and covers a very wide area of topics.  But the often quoted disadvantage of Wikipedia has always been the junk it might bring in and the process involved in validating the content from the users. The illustrated encyclopedia from DK has a better presentation with real like photos and illustrations.  Now DK has an accompanying site to its hard copy encyclopedia called e-encyclopedia powered by Google’s search.  What is e-encyclopedia? Here is what the site has to say.

“e.encyclopedia combines the best of a traditional encyclopedia with an extra digital dimension. The book’s dedicated website has been created with Google, the world’s leading search engine. It guides the reader to the most helpful, appropriate and amazing sites the web has to offer.”

It essentially is an add-on to the textbook and a reader can search for keywords from the book to this site and it uses the Google’s services to bring back web sites that have more information about the keyword. It also allows one to download the high resolution pictures in the book.  But again the dependency of book and the site makes it unreachable for those who really do not have the book.