To respond to competitive challenges from Google, Yahoo, and the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Britannica today will announce it is returning to an old practice after a lapse of a decade by naming an advisory board, whose 15 members top editor Dale Hoiberg calls ''some of the smartest people on earth." The Chicago-based publisher hopes that the prestige and knowledge of the members -- four Nobel laureates and two Pulitzer Prize winners among them -- will help reassert the authority of an encyclopedia first published in 1768 but buffeted in an age when the Internet has loosened the definition of what is factual.

Sir Kenneth Clark, in Another Part of the Wood, wrote of the Eleventh Edition: "One leaps from one subject to another, fascinated as much by the play of mind and the idiosyncrasies of their authors as by the facts and dates. It must be the last encyclopedia in the tradition of Diderot which assumes that information can be made memorable only when it is slightly colored by prejudice. When T.S. Eliot wrote 'Soul curled up on the window seat reading the Encyclopedia' he was certainly thinking of the eleventh edition."

In a deeply interesting chapter of the Life and Letters Francis Darwin has given us his reminiscences of his father's everyday life. Rising early, he took a short walk before breakfasting alone at 7.45, and then at once set to work, "considering the 1.5, hours between 8.o and 9.30 one of his best working times." He then read his letters and listened to reading aloud, returning to work at about 10.30. At 12 or 12.15" he considered his day's work over," and went for a walk, whether wet or fine. For a time he rode, but after accidents had occurred twice, was advised to give it up. After lunch he read the newspaper and wrote his letters or the MS. of his books. At about 3.0 he rested and smoked for an hour while being read to, often going to sleep. He then went for a short walk, and returning about 4.30, worked for an hour. After this he rested and smoked, and listened to reading until tea at 7.30, a meal which he came to prefer to late dinner. He then played two games of backgammon, read to himself, and listened to music and to reading aloud. He went to bed, generally very much tired, at 10.30, and was often much troubled by wakefulness and the activity of his thoughts. It is thus apparent that the number of hours devoted to work in each day was comparatively few. The immense amount he achieved was due to concentration during these hours, also to the unfailing and, because of his health, the necessary regularity of his life.