Link This |
Email this |
Blog This |
Comments (4)
The Encyclopedia Off, Round 8
July 6, 2007
The question for this round was brought to me by a colleague who had a classic EB / Google / Wikipedia experience at the desk. The querent asked what a “tied house” is. Colleague went into the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online – found nothing. Did a Google search, and the fourth entry was a link to the Wikipedia entry for Tied house, which (for those of you who don’t like to click through links for basic information) gave the definition: “In the UK a tied house is a public house that is required to buy at least some of its beer from a particular brewery, unlike free houses, which are able to choose the beers they stock freely.”
I had to delve further, so I did a search of EB for “free house,” and got a reference from the Britannica Book of the Year for 1998 to an article on “Equestrian Sports, Year in Review 1997, Thoroughbred Racing -- United States.” The reference was to a horse named “Free House” who ran in the Preakness and Belmont Stakes races. A Google search for “free house” listed the Wikipedia article as the third entry in the results list.
This one caught me off guard, since the EB is usually exhaustively inclusive of English lore – but it’s a definite win for Wikipedia, making the score to date: Britannica 3, Wikipedia 5.
More as it happens,
Cheryl
Posted by Cheryl LaGuardia on July 6, 2007 | Comments (4)
