General knowledge Slovak-language Encyclopaedia Beliana

It has been a project of the Encyclopaedic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS) since the late 1990s. It contains entries from the fields of social sciences, natural sciences and technical sciences, focusing on various aspects of Slovakia and Slovaks. The editorial staff of the Encyclopaedic Institute together with several hundred authors, advisors and opponents from universities, scientific institutes and other institutions from Slovakia, as well as from the Czech Republic and other countries, have been involved its compilation. Nine illustrated volumes with 56,000 entries, arranged in alphabetical order from A to K, have been published so far. However, these are only accessible to a limited circle of readers. Therefore, the Encyclopaedic Institute has decided to publish the contents of the volumes of the printed Encyclopaedia Beliana also on the internet.

The entries from the printed version of Encyclopaedia Beliana are being gradually published online, while most of the abbreviations are removed for better readability. Some of the content has already been updated, but the editorial staff does not have the resources to update all the articles. Currently, the editorial staff is working simultaneously on the printed version and the online content.

The technical implementation of the online version of the Encyclopaedia Beliana was carried out with the help of the non-profit civic association Society for Open Information Technologies, whose members designed and created the web editing system free of charge and were involved in its connection to the online version. Only open software resources were used and the source code of the products created is available in the Encyclopaedic Institute's GitHub repository https://github.com/enu-sav.

The English version of the Encyclopaediana Beliana was created mainly to provide information about Slovakia to the non-slovak speaking public. Some of the articles have simply been translated from the Slovak version, although most of them have been changed or written only for this purpose. We hope that it will find its readers, users and supporters and become a useful source of information for the public.