History of the Encyclopædia Britannica the criteria by which the articles were sorted were not obvious even to scholars, despite Dr. Adler's claims that the sorting followed naturally from the "Propædia's" outline of all knowledge. In 1985, the "Britannica" responded to reader requests by restoring the index as a two-volume set. The number of topics indexed by the "Britannica" has fluctuated from 500,000 (1985, the same as in 1954) to 400,000 (1989,1991) to 700,000 in the current 2007 print version. Presumably, this recent increase reflects the introduction of efficient electronic indexing, since the size of the encyclopedia has remained nearly constant at approximately 40 million
Encyclopedia Africana never completed the project, the idea of an encyclopedia that explored the black experience was revived and expanded by W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1901 Du Bois widened the scope of the project to encompass the entire African diaspora. He suggested that the encyclopedia be called the "Encyclopedia Africana" in a similar fashion to the "Encyclopædia Britannica". Du Bois envisioned a scientific and comprehensive work on Africa and peoples of African descent that would refute the Enlightenment notion of blacks as devoid of civilization and the hallmarks of humanity. Due to lack of support from the established philanthropies, the