Der Spiegel opens its archive for knowledge portal

 The German news magazine Spiegel is launching a knowledge portal called Spiegel Wissen and is making its entire archive available free of charge. The portal, which will be launched next spring, is a joint venture between Spiegelnet and the Bertelsmann subsidiary Wissen Media Group. The service will be available at Wissen.spiegel.de. To this end, Spiegel's archive articles, which were previously available for a fee, will be opened up: All articles since the magazine was founded in 1947 and the Spiegel online articles will be available. The current issue will remain available for a fee. The Bertelsmann encyclopaedias and dictionaries as well as entries from the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia are also available on the knowledge portal, according to Spiegel.de. According to Spiegel publishing director Mario Frank, the portal is intended to offer an "intelligent linking of editorial and lexical information".