Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine in the challenges of today

Abstract

The article is devoted to the 5th anniversary of the electronic version of the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (EMU) on the Internet (website: esu.com.ua). The study reveals the functions performed by the EMU can be better implemented due to its online version. These include accumulating of nationally relevant knowledge (about Ukraine, Ukrainians, Ukrainian phenomena and realities) and disseminating it in society, playing an important educational role, fos­tering patriotic feelings among Ukrainians based of this knowledge, understanding of national ideas, self-identifying, etc. The EMU website has high traffic, search engine positioning (Google), therefore, provides access to encyclopedic knowledge of a much larger audience than a printed version of this encyclopedia. The disadvantages of the online version of ESU are also highlighted. First of all, the words in the text are shortened like in paper encyclopedias, which have a reason to save space on the pages. There is also no English section. Today, English-language versions of the articles would contribute to destruct the stereotypes about Ukraine, its people, language, culture, history, etc., formed by the Soviet picture of the world (Pax Sovietica) as well as supported and deepened by followers of the Russian world (Pax Russica).

Keywords

• encyclopedia of modern ukraine
• online encyclopedia
• encyclopedic knowledge
• education
• thesaurus
• political nation