EB's EDITOR

Warren Preece '43 Takes Over As Head of World-Famous Encyclopaedia Britannica

EARLY this year the 1965 edition of the world renowned EncyclopaediaBritannica was published and for the first time the name of Warren E. Preece, Dartmouth '43, appeared on the title page as Editor.

We had talked with him about his new post on a warm November day in Chicago, where the headquarters of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are located in a downtown office building just off North Michigan Avenue.

"I've been editor only since June," Preece told us after greetings were exchanged. "Right now we're putting the final touches on the 1965 edition which is on the presses. We try to hold some forms open so we can be as up to date as possible. This edition will carry information .on this fall's elections in the United States and England as well as reports on the Olympic games at Tokyo and even the rejection of the Nobel Prize by Sartre."

Preece is probably one of the youngest men ever to serve as editor of the Britannica, one of the oldest encyclopaedias in the world. EB, as it is known in the trade, will celebrate its 200th year in 1968, one year ahead of Dartmouth College. Fourteen editions were issued between the founding year and 1929, when the final numbered edition —14 — appeared. After that the process of continual revision was adopted and annual editions have appeared since 1933.

"As editor I am responsible for all text, illustrations, and photographs that go into the 24 volumes of the Britannica," Preece reported. "There are two main aspects to the day-to-day execution of this job. First, to secure the best possible articles by the most authoritative writers on all the important subjects of human knowledge; secondly, and perhaps more importantly, to make certain that all these articles in addition to being factually accurate reflect what is important about the subject, are in perspective, and are in balance with each other."

Some idea of the dimensions of this task is provided by a few statistics. The 1965 EB contains nearly 40 million words and 39,655 articles, of which some 29,000 are signed articles (initials are used in EB after each signed article to identify the contributor). Some 10,000 individual authorities have written one or more articles in the current edition.

"Meeting deadlines is probably our biggest single problem," Preece said. "We operate on a very tight schedule and must follow each article through from planning to initial writing to publication on a prearranged schedule. In the old days (prior to 1929) there wasn't this sort of pressure and the editor had a better chance to plan and schedule the volumes. But then it sometimes took ten years to get out one edition."

Thoroughness and quality are the main ingredients which have made EB the most authoritative and widely used reference set in the world. A distinguished Board of Editors serves as "the editorial conscience of the encyclopaedia ...

advising the editor on the principles, goals and standards of Britannica's editorial programs."

The current Board of Editors includes Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of The Fund for the Republic, as chairman; Sir Geoffrey Crowther, former editor and publisher of The Economist in London, as vice chairman; Mortimer J. Adler, William Benton, Clifton Fadiman, Richard P. McKeon, Stanley Morison, David Owen, Thomas Park, George N. Shuster, Adlai E. Stevenson, Ralph W. Tyler, and Philip Gove '22, editor of Webster'sThird International Dictionary.

Prior to his appointment last June as editor Preece had served since 1957 as executive secretary for this Board, which meets quarterly to lay down the broad policy lines guiding Britannica. In this capacity he was the liaison man between the Board of Editors and the editorial staff and his years in this capacity provided him with valuable training for his new job.

The present Britannica has nearly 200 specialists who serve as departmental consultants on the organization, content, and classification of all knowledge falling within their areas. Often they nominate writers, and they constantly review all manuscripts and frequently suggest changes in classification and emphasis.

EB is noted for the quality of its contributors, many of them world-renowned and all of them scholars and specialists of high repute. Forty-two Nobel Prize winners are represented in the current volumes, while distinguished contributors over the years have included Sir Walter Scott, Algernon Swinburne, Macaulay, Matthew Arnold, G. B. Shaw, Chesterton, Leacock, Freud, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Linus Pauling, Lin Yutang, Herbert Hoover, and John F. Kennedy.

"We try always to follow the advice of our classification advisers on changes and revisions," Preece said, "but we can't always make as many revisions as we'd like because of the limitations of space and time. And the explosion of knowledge in the last two decades, particularly in the sciences, has added to our problems."

Preece went on to explain that the trend today, especially in scientific fields, is to develop specialists whose fields of concentration are becoming narrower year by year.

"We are finding it more difficult to get a contributor who can write about his own speciality in a broad enough way to relate it to other fields, even in his own area. I know that colleges and universities are also concerned about this increased specialization by teacher-scholars, and yet I think it is a problem that will accelerate with further developments in human knowledge."

The telephone rang, interrupting our Chicago conversation, and while Preece talked on the phone we had a chance to look at his office. It was a modest office with desk, typewriter table, bookcases, and file cabinet. Behind the editor's desk were the latest Britannica volumes and other reference works. The office is at the far end of the eighth floor and outside, through the open door, we could see the desks and working quarters, divided by partitions, which housed the editorial people who work on EB. Also headquartered here is EncyclopaediaJunior, a 15-volume set for children. Later we learned that EB also maintains a small editorial office in London.

Preece ended his telephone call by suggesting that he and the caller get together in the late afternoon for a cocktail at the Chicago Club and we ventured to remark that he might be considered sort of a businessman-scholar.

"I suppose I am in some ways," he responded, "but like many of my predecessors I think of myself as being in some way a journalist reporting on the history of mankind. We strive to be objective about all areas of human knowledge and to report accurately and fairly on all issues and on various possibilities."

Preece's background seems eminently suited to his present position. At Dartmouth he was an English Honors major, served as contributing editor on TheDartmouth, and was on the executive board of the Dartmouth Outing Club. Following Army service in World War II he did graduate work at Columbia and then taught English at the University of Chicago. A native of Norwalk, Connecticut, he returned to his hometown to become a reporter for the Norwalk Hour. During these years he contributed book reviews and articles to The New YorkTimes, the Chicago dailies, and other newspapers and magazines. Following that Preece spent some months in the political arena serving as an adviser and publicist for Thomas Dodd, now U. S. Senator from Connecticut. It was through Dodd that Preece met William Benton, former Vice President of the University of Chicago who is chairman of the board and publisher of EB. A short while later Preece was hired as executive secretary for the Board of Editors.

It is of interest to note here the relationship between the University of Chicago and Britannica. In 1920, prior to the publication of the 14th edition, Sears, Roebuck and Company acquired the EB. In 1941 William Benton, then Vice President of the University of Chicago, obtained from General Robert E. Wood, chairman of the board of Sears, the offer of ail rights to EB as a gift to the university. When the university trustees were unwilling to assume the financial operations involved, Benton supplied the capital and became principal stockholder, with the university receiving some stock and certain royalties and providing editorial advice through its faculty members along with the faculties of Oxford, Cambridge, the University of London, and the University of Toronto.

As we talked with Preece about Dartmouth we mentioned the fact that the College was not covered in a separate article in Britannica, although it was treated in some detail in a piece appearing under Hanover, N. H. Why doesn't EB have a write-up on a major college like Dartmouth?

"We do have a few major universities under their own headings," Preece answered "and we cover a number of them, like Dartmouth, in other categories. You can imagine how much space would be required if we were to adequately report on all the major educational institutions just in this country."

Preece went on to talk about the daily pressures which are exerted both internally and externally for revisions, changes, and additions to EB. "We get a lot of people writing in to ask why one of their famous relatives isn't included. We now have biographies of outstanding people, although some of the earlier editions had none at all. One editor resigned rather than print biographies. Then there are all sorts of organizations that believe they should be included. We just must make hard judgments on who and what is important enough to be included."

Some of the pressure is taken off by the Britannica Book of the Year, an annual which covers significant developments of the year preceding publication. First information on the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared in this while EB's Biblical advisers waited for more careful research on the Dead Sea findings before submiting recommendations for treatment of them.

Even so there are hundreds of articles„ some new and some revised, which must be handled each year (for 1965: 7,064,000 words in 7,955 articles). After being received from the contributor (and it may take weeks of follow-up to obtain certain articles), the article is read and carefully checked by a classification adviser before it goes to an assistant editor for advanced editing. If any major changes are made it is returned to the contributing author for approval. Then it goes to production editing, where it is again checked, and to Preece's desk for final editing and clearance before it is ready for the presses. EB is printed in Chicago by the R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.

"But these are mechanical and human problems," he added. "Our biggest challenge is more a philosophical one — how do you order knowledge? It's difficult, indeed almost impossible, to reduce human knowledge which has developed over many centuries to an arbitrary alphabetical listing which makes too fragmentary knowledge that is related and interdependent and logically falls under a number of categories. In EB we seek whenever possible to relate our subjects and through a very complete and carefully prepared index to assist users to find all available facts on what they want."

Britannica succeeds pretty well, although as Preece later admitted, it's awfully difficult to guess what every user is going to want to know. And so the EB desks are sometimes crowded with inquiries from readers who complain that they could not find precisely what they wanted when looking up a subject. In most every case, however, the inquiry desks can usually show readers where a little more patience with the index would have led them to the information sought.

Like most Chicago businessmen Preece commutes daily to the city from suburban Winnetka, where he resides with his wife Deborah; two sons, Scott, 16, and Mark, 11; and daughter Thayer, who is nine. Dusk was settling over Chicago when we left Preece. As we strolled along Michigan Avenue we thought of the coincidence of both EB and Dartmouth celebrating their 200th anniversaries within a year of each other. It would be most fitting if our Dartmouth man were still editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica when these milestones are reached. As self-appointed classifier, we concluded that this comes under the heading of a pretty good bet.