Frequently Asked Questions
Explore questions that our customers and community commonly ask about Britannica Education, our products, and support.
Britannica Education
Britannica Education is a division of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Our mission is to ignite curiosity, enrich the lives of students and lifelong learners, and celebrate independent discovery.
About Encyclopædia Britannica Group:
A global leader in education whose flagship products serve the needs of students and consumers on multiple platforms and devices, Britannica has been a pioneer in digital learning since the 1980s and a purveyor of facts since 1768. The company today serves the needs of students, lifelong learners, and professionals by providing curriculum products, language-study courses, digital encyclopedias, and professional readiness training through Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica Education, Britannica Knowledge Systems, Merriam-Webster, and Melingo.
Britannica’s editorial content is unmatched by competitors in quality, quantity, and up-to-dateness.
Our knowledge is tapped from experts from around the globe, including historians and Nobel Prize winners. Learn about the greatest discoveries, insights, and literary achievements in the words of the actual authors, such as Abraham Lincoln, Christopher Columbus, Emily Dickinson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George H.W. Bush, Jane Austen, Martin Luther King, Jr., Plato, Sun Tzu, the Wright brothers, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, and more!
When you add in Britannica’s in-house editorial proficiency and fact checking and combine it with the experience of curriculum specialists, educators, and developers of innovative technology products, the result is high-quality, standards-aligned, award-winning resources that make teaching and learning more effective.
Britannica has been widely recognized as the ultimate reliable source for comprehensive deep research with Britannica School, Britannica Academic, and Britannica Library. Our image library is second to none, with ImageQuest featuring 3.25 million images from over 62 collections.
Britannica’s newest curriculum-aligned resources include LaunchPacks Science and LaunchPacks Social Studies, both accessible in the classroom, from the library, or at home.
Are you a teacher or librarian? Would you like to learn more about our suite of products? Contact a representative and get a personal product tour.
Our products empower all ages from Pre-K to university students and beyond. Today, nearly 100 million students, educators, and curious minds around the world have access to age-appropriate e-books, online tools, apps, and other curriculum and information resources from Britannica.
We put 21st-century skills at the center of learning. With products that align to state and national frameworks (e.g., Common Core State Standards, College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards), Britannica Education prepares students for the world they’ll shape. Our products enable teachers to browse content by Lexile levels and curriculum topics. Many of our products include curriculum standards correlations, which enable educators to easily find content that supports a standard or readily see what standard the content supports.
Need help? Or just want to connect with us? We look forward to hearing from you. Here are a few ways you can reach us.
Mailing Address:
Britannica Education Support
Encyclopædia Britannica
325 North LaSalle Street, Suite 200
Chicago, IL 60654
For questions related to our institutional and special library products, subscriptions, renewals, or placed orders, please call our sales office at 1-800-621-3900 and press 1 for Institutional Sales, or e-mail [email protected]
For Professional Development and Training, please visit, e-mail [email protected], or call 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7201.
For customer support regarding access issues, technical issues, or ADA compliance, please contact us at 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7160. You can also provide a detailed request here: Britannica Customer Support form.
For technical support, please e-mail [email protected] or call 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7160.
Product Support
We encourage our administrators and librarians to contact a Britannica representative for a personal tour. Email our team to set up a demo, preview, or district-wide pilot at [email protected].
Our team will help with integrating our products into the classroom or library and provide real-world applications that make learning relevant and enjoyable.
Our personalized online training sessions are private and confidential, and they are recorded for your future reference.
We offer free online training sessions, demos, resource guides and white papers, newsletters, and blogs, updated throughout the school year to help you discover new features and explore the variety of ways to use our educational products to help your students and lifelong learners succeed.
Support and training is just a phone call away. To get in contact with a Professional Development specialist, e-mail [email protected] or call 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7201.
We have a team of former educators dedicated to your success who will provide free training as well as technical and professional development support for every subscriber.
We even help get your teachers on board and build excitement for our instructional and informational resources through social media, webinars, e-mail, and on-site visits.
And we can also develop a custom training program with high interest topics for teachers of elementary and secondary grades. Certificates of attendance are provided.
Yes, you just login once to search a topic in both resources. Integration with Britannica School, Britannica Library, and Britannica Academic offers a streamlined ability to explore millions of related images directly from the search results page (requires subscriptions to both databases).
And you can automatically login to your individual “My Images” account. Great for accessing ImageQuest from home!
Bookmark our resource center today! It’s chock-full of help, with very specialized resources dedicated to each of our educational products. Don’t see what you’re looking for yet? Let us know at [email protected]. We’re always looking to make our resource center better for our educator community!
And you can automatically login to your individual “My Images” account. Great for accessing ImageQuest from home!
Purchase Support
Access is typically available in 24‒48 hours unless there is a problem with the order. For orders placed on non-business days or during non-business hours, access will be available within 24‒48 hours of the first business day following the order date.
Simply contact us at [email protected], and we will help you modify your order.
You may use a personal or school/library credit card (VISA, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover). If you want to use a purchase order, please e-mail it to [email protected] or fax it to 1.800.344.9624.
We’re so excited you’ve decided to subscribe! You can:
- Call 1-800-621-3900 and speak to one of our sales specialists, available Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm CT.
- E-mail [email protected].
If you are ordering for more than one school or library building, we invite you speak to a sales representative to ensure you receive any available discounts. To get started, please call 1-800-621-3900 or e-mail [email protected].
Not ready to order but interested in learning more? Contact a Britannica representative for a personal tour.
However, there is nothing better than diving in and getting a hands-on experience. Product previews are available as well as district-wide pilots that include professional development training and support.
Email our team to set up a demo, preview, or district-wide pilot at [email protected].
View a full list of products, watch a quick demo, and fill out the contact form to get started.
Educational institutions typically subscribe to Britannica products on an annual subscription basis. Pricing is based on student enrollment or, in the case of public library purchases, on population served.
Buyers may receive a discount for purchasing a Britannica Education product for more than one school or library and/or by purchasing more than one product.
All subscription purchases will provide access to all users within the purchasing institution—from within the institution’s building(s) and anywhere remote. An annual subscription also provides full access to potential product updates made throughout the year.
For ordering questions, contact us at 1-800-621-3900 or [email protected].
Technical Support
Our core educational products are available to use on demand, on any device, wherever learning takes you.
Our products, including Britannica School, Britannica Academic, Britannica Library, ImageQuest, LaunchPacks Science, and LaunchPacks Social Studies, are built with responsive design, so we are optimized for use on iPads and Android tablets and responsive on iPhones, smartphones, and interactive whiteboards.
Use Britannica on interactive whiteboards, tablets, smartphones, and computers and easily share resources, exchange ideas, and create something new for students. Britannica Digital Learning helps educators transform learning to reach every student’s true potential.
Whether you need to work in the classroom, in the library, or at home, our educational products will be accessible.
Information About Browsers and Plug-ins
Since our suite of products is accessed over the Internet, it is subject to the same performance issues that affect other websites. There are some steps that schools can take to improve the performance of our products (and other websites). Britannica recommends using current versions of Internet browsers, specifically:
- Google Chrome version 52.0 or higher
- Mozilla Firefox version 45.0 or higher
- Microsoft Edge version 25.0 or higher
- Safari version 9.1 or higher
Many of our classroom and teacher resources utilize multimedia features. These require a number of standard software plug-ins included with most operating systems or Internet browsers. Britannica recommends using current versions of the required plug-ins. Current versions can be downloaded for free from the Internet. Generally, if a plug-in is missing, the browser will provide a prompt to download it. The following plug-ins are required:
- Windows Media Player version 12.0 or highest version available for the computer’s platform
- Adobe Acrobat Reader version 11.0.12 or higher
Information About Authentication and Cookies
Once a computer has been logged in, students should not be prompted to log in again.
If students are asked repeatedly to log in on the same computer, the cookies are probably being deleted. If a school provides individual network log-in accounts for each student, Britannica recommends that the school set up the network profiles so that cookies can be shared between accounts.
If school computers are set up to delete cookies periodically, then their Britannica cookie will be deleted. If possible, set up the computer so that the Britannica cookie is not deleted. Schools using Deep Freeze™, Fortres™, or other security software products that refresh computers frequently may also be deleting the Britannica cookie. Britannica recommends including the school’s Britannica cookie within the Deep Freeze™ refresh itself, so that the computer will automatically be logged in when it is refreshed.
Yes! Did you know that 18 U.S. states—Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—are Britannica Regional Partners? This means every school in those states already has access to Britannica School! Visit our regional access page to see what other products you may have at your disposal if you’re in a partner state. No matter where you’re located, your school librarian is a great resource to discover what educational products your institution uses and how you can access them.
Subscriptions/pricing are based on student population, therefore we have no restrictions on the number of users that can access our database(s).
Britannica has universal access, which means we are already integrated with the classroom and library technology your students and teachers rely on.
For Britannica School, Britannica Academic, and Britannica Library this includes Google, Canvas, LTI, EBSCO, Follett, and more. For ImageQuest, this integration includes Google, Canvas, LTI, Shibboleth, and Follett.
We’re glad to assist with your technical needs. We are available Monday‒Friday from 9am to 5pm CT. You can e-mail [email protected] or call 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7160.
We also encourage you to browse our FAQ section for helpful information and advice.
You’ve come to the right place. To get started, please fill out this request form, and we’ll respond to you within one business day.
To fulfill the objectives of our accessibility commitment, we have adopted as our primary guidelines the Section 508 website accessibility standards set forth by the U.S. General Services Administration and also the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). We continuously test Britannica sites for compliance with the accessibility standards set forth above and try our very best to remain compliant.
The accessibility of Britannica sites, however, depends on third-party technologies provided by the operating systems, hardware platforms, and assistive technologies, all of which can affect the level of accessibility of Britannica sites.
We will continue to enhance the accessibility of our online products as greater functionality becomes available to ensure ongoing usefulness to all users, including those with different abilities.
We also are committed to addressing issues that prevent the use of our software by people with different abilities. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. If you have any comments or questions about our online products and the accessibility thereof, please contact Britannica Customer Support at 1-800-621-3900, ext. 7160 or go to the Britannica Customer Support form.
In addition, please let us know if you have any problems accessing Britannica sites. When you contact us, please provide the following information:
- The nature of your accessibility problem
- The format you prefer for receiving requested website material
- The Web address of the requested material
- Your contact information
