The coronavirus disease COVID-19's coverage in Ukrainian and European encyclopedias

Today, humans have the phase of the social organization evolution, in which information, communication technologies, and knowledge are fundamental objects of production, as well as the digital environment is an important space for the development of society. There are problems of people’s digital literacy actualized by the increasing role of the existing and growing in information and knowledge in society from Internet environment. This study illustrates the issue of getting digital literacy using online encyclopedic resources on the case about informing the pandemic of coronavirus disease COVID-19 worldwide in 2019-2020. Based on analysis of the mentioned virological topic articles of the national encyclopedias of Europe (Britannica, Brockhaus, Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, Great Norwegian Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, etc.) the conclusion is made that encyclopedic knowledge is inert and during the pandemic, it has a low practical role for the needs of humans in the context of safe behavior and right decisions. However, Wikipedia differs from other national online encyclopedias by offering much more information including that is not commonly found in classical
encyclopedias, but is useful to readers.