History

Columbia University in the City of New York holds a long and distinguished tradition of Iranian scholarship, officially inaugurated in 1895 by the appointment of A.V.W. Jackson as Columbia's first professor of Indo-Iranian languages.  In the early 1970s Ehsan Yarshater, then Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, made a significant contribution to this tradition with his conception of a comprehensive Iranian studies reference work, the Encyclopædia Iranica. These qualities are reflected by the project's continued ability to attract grants from independent grant-making agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

In 1982 the first fascicle of the Encyclopædia Iranica appeared in print. As of Spring 2012, fifteen complete volumes of the print edition are available. The next fascicle to be published, XVI/1, will become available in May, 2012 is fascicle  containing entries up to “Kāšši.”

In 1990 the non-profit Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation was established to guarantee the project’s intellectual independence and strengthen its long-term viability.

In 1996 the first version of Encyclopædia Iranica's free website (iranica.com) was created to take full advantage of the opportunity for increased exposure posed by the rapid growth of the internet. This web presence significantly facilitated access to the Encyclopædia. Moreover, the digital edition allowed for the publication of entries out of sequence with the strict alphabetical order of the printed edition, so that as of Spring 2010 approximately 800 of more than 7,000 entries have been published exclusively in the online edition.

In 2010 the current website, iranicaonline.org, was developed in collaboration with the web design company Electric Pulp in order to increase facility of usage and upkeep of content.  This updated website will serve as a platform for the ongoing transformation of the printed reference work into a dynamic digital resource.