Encyclopedia Yearbooks

general or, sometimes, specialized periodicals containing information about the year preceding the one indicated in the yearbook title. Encyclopedia yearbooks are issued either as a series (for example, according to branches of knowledge or countries) supplementing the basic encyclopedia or as independent reference works. They are published by many of the world’s general encyclopedias and include Americana Annual (New York, since 1923) and Britannica Book of the Year (London since 1938). Several foreign encyclopedias issue supplements irregularly, accumulating several years’ material, for example, the Annual Supplement to the Spanish Illustrated Universal European American Encyclopedia.

Since 1957 the Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, an independent general reference work, has been published regularly in the USSR. It contains information on the political, economic, and cultural life of the USSR and the Union and autonomous republics, of foreign states, and of nonself-governing territories and colonies. It also gives information on the activities of the most important international organizations, on developments in the international workers’ and communist movement, and on the most important advances in science, technology, and culture. The yearbook includes biographical information on outstanding contemporaries and survey articles on topics of special importance for the given year. The Yearbook of the Great Medical Encyclopedia has been published since 1968.