''They get a pretty good workout,'' said Sue Sikes, the librarian. And the Gila Bend Public Library in Gila Bend, Ariz., which has a population of about 1,500, has two sets, the 13th and 14th editions. The New York Public Library, for example, has 40 sets in its general reference division and another 64 in its 82 branch libraries. The Britannica, first published in three volumes beginning in 1768, remains a favorite reference source of librarians. ''With these improvements, we're nearer to our ideal of perfection.'' Hutchins as chairman of the Britannica's board of editors in 1974.
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''With the 15th edition, we thought we had produced the best Britannica ever, and we had, but nothing's ever perfect,'' said Dr. And a new World Data Annual provides a review of the previous year, as well as statistics about the area, population, communications facilities, and commerce of more than 200 nations - statistics previously found in the Macropaedia. The Propaedia is still one volume and still divides the world of knowledge into 10 subjects.
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The 17,000-page Macropaedia contains 23 million words, 8,000 illustrations and biographies of such major figures as Jesus, Confucius, Jefferson, Henry Ford, Napoleon and Gandhi. Information about the solar system, for example, is now presented under the heading of ''Solar System,'' instead of obliging the reader to refer to separate articles on the sun, moon and various planets. The Macropaedia has been reduced to 17 volumes and the number of articles slashed from more than 4,200 to 681, about 400 of them of book length.