Star Wars had a decent chronology for a while, until the reboot.
I don't think they've published a new once since the reboot. That reboot would complicate things a bit, since it's the first time that a parallel universe has had equal or near-equal importance to the main one. But you could do it.
I will agree about the Encyclopedia, but the other side of that is the fact that Star Trek has done that for longer, beginning with Bjo Trimble's Concordance.
I can see the point.
Star Wars is better at tying in to on screen material, from how a starship works to what different little details mean, up to and including random and obscure characters and their tattoos.
True;
Star Trek reference material tends to only consolidate onscreen info, not add new stuff (tech manuals are the exception, but those aren't really reference books, but non-canon in-universe textbooks, a la the
Jedi Path and stuff). They do seem to be made with different ideas in mind (cataloguing the universe vs. expanding on it).
Now, I have the Star Trek Encyclopedia, and tech manual (love that thing), but it sometimes feels less accessible if I'm looking for something specific. Star Wars books feels a lot easier to navigate for finding out specific details.
I'm not so much into the tech manuals (although I want a copy of
Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise); it's not really my thing and I tend to like to stick to canon stuff when it comes to reference materials and leave non-canon what-if for the tie-in fiction. My personal favorite
Star Trek "reference" books are the old LUG RPGs they made on the franchise; kinda out of date in regards to the fluff, but it was very good fluff in how it built on what we knew at the time.
I like the
Encyclopedia and
Chronology and, ironically, the reason I like them better then most
Star Wars stuff is I found them far more accessible. Take the
New Essential Chronology for
Star Wars. Wonderfully written like it's an actual history text book and beautiful illustrations. However, absolutely no sources cited. I'd read about these wonderful tales I was interested in finding the book/comic/whatever and getting the full thing, but I'd have to go online and do the legwork to find out what it was. With
Star Trek stuff, every factoid had a specific episode/movie cited, so you could see it for yourself. It could even double as a chronological order checklist, since each episode and movie was given a header title with the stardate and everything. Even beyond that, there were plenty of notation and editor's comments explaining how the information was crunched, what kinds of judgement calls were made in regards to inconsistencies and events where there were gaps of knowledge, plus interesting appendixes with even more info.
I think the two franchises encyclopedias were comparable in terms of being easy to use, but the little behind the scenes goodies in
Star Trek's put it ahead for me.
I like Star Trek books, but I think Star Wars does a better job overall in terms of tech and reference.
Fair enough. I like
Star Trek as a franchise slightly more, so that is my bias. I guess I think that
Star Wars tends to have better artistic quality and mastered the "in-universe" reference books, character journals, and the like, while
Star Trek tends to be better for research.
