I read through the entire Oxford Dictionary one semester.
I was quite impressed.
There wasn’t very much of a plot, but the author sure had a great vocabulary.
I have a set of the 1911, which is the particularly fine one - it’s wonderful reading, back from when encyclopedias weren’t necessarily unbiased sources at all.
But as a librarian even I can get behind ceasing print publication of a frequently updated reference source. We do still need children’s print encyclopedias, though.
First, you read the article from the New York Times incorrectly. It said that of the last printing, 8,000 copies have already been sold while 4,000 remain in inventory. Second, Mr. Cauz did not mean that “Wikipedia is continuously edited” but that the EB website is continuously edited.
Why? Children can’t use the Internet?
And even if it had won, we wouldn’t be the winners. The Wikipedia model is very problematic, in that actual experts are often drowned out by non-experts, and that Wikipedia does not accept original research.
Coincidentally enough I stumbled on this page today while web-surfing:
I particularly liked this one…
…which apparently lasted for 5 years, 2 months, 2 days.
Sure they can, but it’s often very useful to be able to hand them a volume. Children tend to do assignments that just require an encyclopedia article.
ETA - and the World Book is still quite popular - they evidently think they want print. We have reference and circulating copies, and they move quite a bit.
I would much rather hand my nine year old a book then have to worry about her surfing the web unsupervised.
Our set at home was my go-to for homework assignments in elementary school. I remember researching Mars, woodpeckers, and China!
Not for the same assignment.
If the price drops by the time I’m in a position to, I guess I’ll get it. If it turns out to be an expensive collectors item, I guess I won’t. I might keep my eyes open at yard sales and Goodwill and the like. I really do miss having it on hand.
A particularly fine edition, from which the late, great Anna Russell took “all her information”!
What will happen to the Encyclopedia Britannica kid?
My parents bought a set of EB in the late 50’s before their first child was born. For at least 20 years afterwards, they got a book of the year addendum annually. In 68 they bought the World Book, too.
My parents had two encyclopedias when I was growing up. One was the kind that you could buy from the supermarket for a few dollars for each volume. The EB was far too expensive for us, although I have no idea what it cost then. Now, I wish I had the room for it, because it would be cool to own (partly simply because it would look cool on a shelf). I was also tempted to buy Modernist Cuisine, again because it would look cool on the shelf but also because it’s supposed to be beautifully printed. But perhaps that’s one of the advantages of living in a small apartment; I have to control my impulse to buy too many books.
Now I am wondering if there *are *Chinese woodpeckers on Mars.
Heh. Now that I think of it, it was roadrunners, not woodpeckers.
Chinese Roadrunners from Mars: band name!
Growing up, we had the 1979 edition The New Book of Knowledge by Grolier with the white cover. I liked it a lot.
Right now in my office I have a 1967 edition of Britannica that I rescued from being thrown out by an acquaintance.
It occurred to me to wonder: Is Encyclopedia Brown still in print? Do kids still read those books?
Will future kids even know where Encyclopedia Brown’s name comes from? Or will he join his lesser-known colleagues, Gazetteer Harris and Lexicon Jones, on the scrap heap?
Kids still love Encyclopedia Brown.
And don’t be silly - there are still encyclopedias. Hell, there’s still a Britannica! It’s just not on paper.
Here’s an article by historian Timothy Messer-Kruse regarding his experience with Wikipedia.