France's Larousse publishing house on Tuesday launched an online French-language encyclopedia offering free access to its dictionary and inviting users to contribute content, aiming to rival Wikipedia.

France's Larousse publishing house on Tuesday launched an online French-language encyclopedia offering free access to its dictionary and inviting users to contribute content, aiming to rival Wikipedia.

Larousse.fr said however that it would keep the two reference pages separate and that users making contributions will be identified, unlike the popular user-generated Wikipedia, which has anonymous authors.

"People are more and more used to this abundance and are able to distinguish between reference articles and those expressing a point of view," said Line Karoubi, the assistant director for dictionaries and encyclopedias at Larousse.

Several other companies have moved to rival Wikipedia with online encyclopedias including Google's Knol, which also has identified authors.

© 2008 AFP