The children’s online encyclopedia Q-files.com has big plans for the future. We have uncovered a large and growing market for trustworthy, highly illustrated, online reference material that schools can use in lessons and assignments, and to which learners of all abilities will gratefully turn for help with their homework and projects. A comprehensive, in-depth, authoritative educational resource, Q-files is perfectly designed to meet this demand. Now we plan to build on our advantage.

Already vast in scope, Q-files is going to become bigger still. While we are careful not to overload each individual page with too much information (that way lies the dense, sometimes impenetrable world of Wikipedia—great for graduate researchers, but less useful for children just getting to grips with things), there are many more subjects we can add. With getting on for 1500 pages, we have excellent coverage, but there are a number of areas that can be expanded, e.g. geographies of individual US states, histories of various nations, plant and animal species, sportspeople, writers, artists and composers, and so on. Our team of writers and expert consultants are raring to go.

The world is a fast-changing place and any encyclopedia worth the name will be judged by how promptly it keeps abreast of things. And this doesn’t just mean including important events as they happen. Discoveries of remote solar systems, reclassifying dinosaurs, new ideas about the human family tree—once in the public domain, all this new knowledge must be included in reference works. With the advantage of being a digital rather than a printed encyclopedia, Q-files can, of course, take in updates quickly and easily, but it still requires us to monitor what’s going on around the world on a regular basis.

We want as many schools, libraries and parents around the world as possible to discover Q-files. Our ambition demands two things of us. Firstly, we need to get Q-files translated into other major languages apart from English—a big undertaking. Secondly, we need to build a network of distributors and partners to give Q-files a reach beyond what we, a small company based in Oxford, England, are capable of. Some have started working with us already. We are now inviting EdTech companies—both producers of educational software and manufacturers of devices—to discuss with us ways of offering Q-files to their customers.

A website is a dynamic construct. Everyone expects something new and better from it. We are keen to meet all these expectations by constantly making improvements and introducing exciting innovations. So, visitors to Q-files, look out for design enhancements, new editorial features and navigation upgrades, together with the publication of apps, e-books and other digital learning materials to complement our online resource. An expanding, self-renewing, up-to-the-minute digital resource, Q-files will soon establish itself as the world’s number one online children’s encyclopedia.

Great content. We want to make Q-files even greater.

Nicholas Harris

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