The Boston Globe has an article today by Eric Ferkenhoff about the Encyclopedia Britannica‘s response to Wikipedia and other online resources. It seems to be primarily a PR effort: After a lapse of 10 years, it’s re-appointing a 15-person advisory board that will meet twice a year to “fine-tune” editorial content. Or, as board member Wendy Doniger (a professor at U of Chicago’s Divinity School) puts it in a phrase she probably regrets already: “We’re deciding what people are going to think.”

The board is more diverse than before, actually including three women (wow!) and members from all the inhabited continents except Australia*:

”The world has changed,” Doniger said. ”There has to be far more attention to the Third World, to women, to alternative political groups, to alternative literature, and things and ideas that weren’t covered by the old Britannica, which was a white male thing.”

All to the good.

By the way, the article cites Jimmy Wales as saying Wikipedia is going to add a new product that will take care of the problem that, because the site is live, you can’t rely on its quality. The article oddly doesn’t say what that Wikipedia is going to do about it. I assume Jimbo is referring to the the plan to have a “release 1.0” version of articles to serve as a standard reference, so at least you won’t have to worry that when you link to an article on bosons, someone will go there during the ten minutes when it’s been edited into an ad for Swedish penis pumps. [Technorati tags: wikipedia britannica knowledge]

*Sure, Australia may be a little slow, but it’s got a great personality.