Britannica Compares Online Institutional and Free Web Products (November 1999 Action for Libraries newsletter) Since the Encyclop‘dia Britannica announced that its 32-volume reference work is now accessible at no cost on the World Wide Web, calls and e-mail have been pouring in to BCR from libraries participating in BCR's Britannica Online group subscription. Their question: what is the difference between the subscription they pay for and this new, free- access web version? Britannica maintains that libraries' institutional version is even now a better product and worth paying for and that it will be even better as new tools are developed and added to it over the next few months. Because some of these tools are in the early stages of development, Britannica is automatically extending BCR member libraries current subscriptions by four months. The following are features that currently are available exclusively on Britannica Online as opposed to the free product on the Web: Refined academic search results with multiple relevant articles. Merriam-Webster Dictionary - searchable and double-click on a word in the dictionary for a definition. Intermediate K-12 student encyclopedia debuting in November. Free of advertising. Clean, familiar interface focused on research. Spotlight Archive. Spotlight Study Guides. Today in History - events through time. People - daily featured biographies and birthdays. Year in Review - Britannica Book of the Year Browseable content (alphabetically). Citations. Bibliographies. Nations of the World visual interface. Workspace - research collection tool. Usage statistics by year, month, week, day and hour. Britannica officials also are promising a number of new features to be added to Britannica Online over the next few months. These include: customization and lecture tools, academic news, features and conferences, academic journals/magazines including new exclusive content, Z39.50 compliancy and guide to technology in education. Stewart Brand, co-founder of The Well, also is helping Britannica establish academic communities on the Web around common disciplines. For a detailed comparison of Britannica Online with the free Web product, browse to www.bcr.org/~ids/ Reference/brit-compare.html.