Brockhaus Enzyklopädie digital

The world’s knowledge in digital form

With the award-winning "Brockhaus Enzyklopädie digital", the collective knowledge of our world included in the currently 30 Brockhaus tomes is made available on a small USB stick. No installation work is needed in order to use it. Its natural language search assistant, hypertext links and user dialogues allow users to easily search through and utilize the contents of the "Brockhaus Enzyklopädie digital".

LEWI (Lexikonbasierte Wissenserschließung – Encyclopedia-based knowledge retrieval)

LEWI was a project of the publishing house Bibliographisches Institut & F. A. Brockhaus AG. It was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

There is an increasing need for effective software interfaces that correspond better with people’s daily life in order to facilitate their access to information, especially since computer systems are becoming more and more complex and every single person has less and less time to learn new operational concepts. In the LEWI project solutions were designed for a completely new handling of full-text databases of all kinds. Thanks to language portals and visual information retrieval, computer laypersons can overcome their inhibitions to use full-text datbases.

The aim of the project was to develop a natural language interface in full-text databases, using the example of the "Brockhaus multimedial".

IAI’s solutions

As a subcontractor, IAI developed several components of the system:

• establishment of a thesaurus for the "Brockhaus multimedial"
• autmatic indexing and classification of the "Brockhaus multimedial"
• design and adjustment of a question interpreter
• design, adjustment and programming of a dialogue module

The results of the LEWI project for natural language search have been successfully integrated into the new electronic version of the "Brockhaus Enzyklopädie" , which is commercially available on a USB stick.

Awards for the “Brockhaus Enzyklopädie digital”

		AKEP Award – Award for Innovation in Electronic Publishing "The "Brockhaus Enzyklopädie digital" sets itself significantly apart from the other nominated products and provides new perspectives to see the world and perceive knowledge thanks to the interaction of various information", justifies Arnoud de Kemp, spokesman for the jury and for AKEP, the decision. The encyclopedia outclassed all previous CD-ROM and DVD encyclopedias with regard to its content and functions. The jury was particularly impressed by the various possibilities of searching for knowledge. For example, the search engine responds to the entry of complex questions (natural language search assistant) and represents associative relations in a three-dimensional knowledge space. Source: www.boersenverein.de
		digita 2006 – German Educational Software Award The digita jury awarded the Brockhaus publishing house for its groundbreaking concept of a general-education knowledge logistic that sets new standards with its multimediality and interactivity. The jury was particularly pleased with the Brockhaus encyclopedia in pocket format because it helps people who do not want to take outside the 24,500 pages of the 30 Brockhaus tomes plus the equipment required for the audio library. Saved on a notebook and connected with the internet via the Brockhaus online portal, "Brockhaus digital" can make available its collective knowledge anytime and anywhere. Source: www.digita.de