History World

The core material of HistoryWorld is 400 interconnecting narratives and 6000 selected events (amounting in all to more than a million words) in a database created and written by Bamber Gascoigne. He began this work in 1994 when he was inspired by a CD ROM published by London's National Gallery. HistoryWorld was planned originally as a CD ROM. But in 1998 it was suggested by Ian Henghes (now our development director) that its natural platform was the internet.

Early in 2000 Bamber Gascoigne teamed up with Diverse (a well established television and new media company founded by Peter Donebauer) to form HistoryWorld Ltd and to publish the material online. HistoryWorld was launched in June 2001. Just over a year later it won the New Statesman New Media award as Britain's best educational website.

The concept from the start was that HistoryWorld must be extremely interactive in its presentation and retrieval systems. It was also a central theme that the content must be properly indexed, in the traditional way, rather than relying on the erratic results of word searches.

The other founding concept was that it is possible to deal with the full range of general knowledge on any particular subject, in this case world history. On a national basis general knowledge varies greatly at the margins, but there are many people and events in history whose fame transcends national interests. These are the names dealt with in encyclopedias, mentioned in passing in conversation, asked in quiz questions.

It was a quiz which gave Bamber Gascoigne the concept of general knowledge as a definable territory. For 25 years he was the presenter of University Challenge, a weekly quiz game in Britain for university students. Those questions which rang a bell, however faint, in the minds of the competing students were those within the field of general knowledge.

Gascoigne is also the author of several works of general history and of the Encyclopedia of Britain (1993), which set out to define general knowledge in a British context. Its usefulness was well expressed by Auberon Waugh in the Telegraph when he wrote: 'So far, every time I have had a genuine enquiry, he has provided the answer. It is like having a good-natured friend available on the telephone.' This encylcopedia (itself amounting to more than 500,000 words) has been integrated into HistoryWorld to provide back-up material on British subjects.

Site en Anglais
http://www.historyworld.net

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HistoryWorld  ven 28 sep. 01