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The
short term mission of the Encyclopaedia Africana Project:
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To strengthen the infra
structural facilities and human resource capacities of the Encyclopaedia Africana Project Secretariat in Accra, Ghana, West Africa .
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To generate and review
researched biographical articles for the completion of the next two
volumes of the Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™ . Countries to be covered - Nigeria and Egypt.
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To have accumulated articles
on Libya, presently in Arabic, translated into English and organized for
publication.
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To facilitate intellectual
interaction and co-operation among literary scholars on African
biographies and history.
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To initiate the
translation of volumes 1, 2 & 3 of the
Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™ into French and Arabic.
With virtually no consistent
cash-flow for many years, except for a stipend from the Ghana Government, to maintain the
Secretariat, work at the Secretariat has been slowed considerably.
However, with the dynamic leadership of the Chairman of the EAP Editorial
Board, Dr. S. O. Biobaku of Nigeria, three EA volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™ have been published
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Publication
Status
Three
(3) volumes
of the
Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™ have been published, heretofore:
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Volume
1: Ethiopia
and Ghana (Sample Biographies)
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Volume 2:
Sierra Leone & Zaire
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Volume 3:
South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho & Swaziland
Presently,
articles covering biographies from Nigeria
(EA Volume 18) and Egypt
(EA Volume 15) are
being compiled and organized in preparation for review
and publication.
In addition, articles from
Libya (EA Volume 11),
originally written in Arabic, are being organized for
translation into English.
For
more information about the Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™
volumes, including how to:
Purchase the three (3) completed EA volumes
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Volume
1: Ethiopia
and Ghana
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Volume
2:
Sierra Leone & Zaire
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Volume
3:
South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho & Swaziland
Please contact:
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About
Encyclopaedias
and Dictionaries
For
more than 2,000 years encyclopaedias have existed
as summaries of extant
scholarship in forms comprehensible to their
readers. The word encyclopaedia,
of Greek origin (enkyklopaideia), at first meant a
circle or a
complete system of learning - that is, an
all-around education. When
Rabelais used the term in French for the
first time in Pantagruel (chapter
20), he was still talking of
education.
It
was Paul Scalich, a German writer
and compiler, who was the first to use the
word to describe a book in the
title of his Encyclopaedia; seu, orbis
disciplinarum, tam sacrarum quam
prophanum epistemon...
("Encyclopaedia;
or Knowledge of the World
of Disciplines, Not Only Sacred but
Profane..."), issued at Basel in
1559. The many encyclopaedias that had been
published prior to this time
either had been given fanciful titles (Hortus
deliciarum, "Garden of
Delights") or had been simply called
"dictionary."
The
word dictionary has been widely used as a name for
encyclopaedias, and Scalich's pioneer use
of encyclopaedia did not find general
acceptance until Denis Diderot made
it fashionable with his historic French
encyclopaedia, although cyclopaedia
was then becoming fairly popular as an
alternative term. (see also Index:
publishing)
"Dictionary"
is used to describe a wide variety of reference
works. Basically, a dictionary lists a set
of words with information about them. The list
may attempt to be a complete inventory of a
language or may be only a
small segment of it. A short list,
sometimes at the back of a book, is often
called a glossary. When a word list is an
index to a limited body of writing,
with references to each passage, it is
called a concordance. Theoretically, a good
dictionary could be compiled by organizing into
one list a large number of concordances. A word
list that consists of geographic names only
is called a gazetteer.
Copyright
(c) 1997 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights
Reserved
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