Encyclopedia Americana

''Encyclopedia Americana'' is a general encyclopedia written in American English. It was the first general encyclopedia of any magnitude to be published in North America. With ''Collier's Encyclopedia'' and ''Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana'' became one of the three major and large English-language general encyclopedias; the three were sometimes collectively called "the ABCs of encyclopedias". Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic.

The encyclopedia has more than 45,000 articles, most of them more than 500 words and many running to considerable length (the "United States" article is over 300,000 words). ''Americana'' is international in scope and is known for its detailed coverage of American and Canadian geography and history. ''Americana'' is also known for its strong coverage of biographies, as well as scientific and technical subjects. Written by 6,500 contributors, the ''Encyclopedia Americana'' includes over 9,000 bibliographies, 150,000 cross-references, 1,000+ tables, 1,200 maps, and almost 4,500 black-and-white line art and color images. It also has 680 fact boxes. Major articles are signed by their contributors, many being scholars pre-eminent in their field.

Long available as a 30-volume print set, the ''Encyclopedia Americana'' is now marketed as an online encyclopedia requiring a subscription. In March 2008, Scholastic said that print sales remained good but that the company was still deciding on the future of the print edition. The company's final print edition was released in 2006.

The online version of the ''Encyclopedia Americana'', first introduced in 1996, continues to be updated and sold. This work, like the print set from which it is derived, is designed for high school and first-year college students along with public library users. It is available to libraries as one of the databases in the Scholastic GO! reference service (previously known as Grolier Online), which also includes the ''Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia'', an encyclopedia for middle and high school students, ''The New Book of Knowledge'', an encyclopedia for ages 7-14 and particularly grades 3-6, America the Beautiful, Lands and Peoples, Amazing Animals of the World, and The New Book of Popular Science. According to The New York Public Library, Scholastic GO! also includes the La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre, a Spanish-language general encyclopedia for students in middle through high school. However, the previously mentioned Scholastic blog does not show that. It is possible that La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre is only included in the Spanish version of Scholastic GO!, though the existense of that in itself is unsure due to the same New York Public Library link saying that the language of Scholastic GO! is English. Scholastic GO! is not available to individual subscribers. Provided by Wikipedia