I had my father’s set of World Books from the mid-sixties and had access to a mid-80s edition at school. I remember quite vividly how the mid-sixties book portrayed how we would get to the moon, land, and return, while the more recent set of books was obviously based on what actually happened. While clearly they cleaned it up and changed a few things along the way, I was surprised at how it basically was the exact same information, changed from a hypothetical to an actual event.
My family has a 1972 World Book set. We also have a mostly-complete 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
That’s the column. It ran in a Massachusetts newspaper, where I grew up.
We had a set of encyclopedias when I was a kid. Mom got them at the supermarket. Later, she bought a set of Funk & Wagnalls animal encyclopedias from the same place. My brother has them now.
I have a set of Encyclopedia Britannica (1964) that my cousin gave me, and there’s a set of kid’s encyclopedias downstairs that my husband got from his folks.
My mom taught with a lady who sold World Book Encyclopedia. We purchased a set in the late 60’s. We lived in an area where getting TV reception was hardly worth the $$ and hassle so we didn’t have a TV until I came home from college in 1978(?)
I was a voracious reader. By the 4-5th grade I had literally read the encyclopedia and could go back and find sections I liked. I still remember the pictures in the candle-powered radio article. I think being exposed to the range of science, history, and culture described there set a course for my later life.
We owned a set of World Book Encyclopedia, circa 1960 (the year I was born). My grandparents had a Colliers set. I enjoyed them so much! I always wanted a Britannica set, as well, but we just never got around to ordering them…
We didn’t have any of the famous sets, just a couple of single volume general knowledge encyclopaedias. But we did have a complete set of the Tell Me Why books, which were very useful in their own way.
I had the 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica Jr.
I loved the “Tell Me Why” books, as well.
I just looked some of these up and found the names.
The Boy’s and Girl’s Encyclopedia: Britannica Jr.
It must have been published in the middle of WWII since the article on it was titled “War in Europe 1939-”.
This must have been The Golden Book Encyclopedia.
I was 11 at the time, but that was what my parents said. I believe it because they weren’t loaded with money at the time.
My mother still has a 1986 Encyclopedia Britannica set and update books up till 1998(?), I think. They were bought from a door to door encyclopedia salesman.
We had Americana when I was a kid. It must have been from the early 60s. Loved it. Used it for many a report all through elementary school.
We had a 1976 World Book. I was really interested in the planets and read the articles on all of them, and one entry confused the hell out of me. When you looked up “Mercury” it said that mercury was a silvery liquid metal derived from an ore called cinnabar. And that didn’t make any sense to me, I knew Mercury was a crater-covered rockball. But it was in the encyclopedia! I had to live with this nagging cognitive dissonance for a least a year or two until I figured out that there were actually three articles titled “Mercury”–the roman deity, the element, and the planet, and the one about the element was the first one. If I had thought to keep reading to the next page I would have seen the article on the planet. When I finally figured it out it was a huge relief.
My family was another World Book family, probably the 1979 or 1980 edition, and we got the annual Year Book until I graduated high school in 1992. It was my “job” each year when we got the Year Book to put the stickers for the updated entries in the original set. Eventually the set migrated to an extra bedroom next to the bathroom, which made for very convenient bathroom reading when needed. 
The set of Encyclopedia Britannica and those The Children’s Hour books that my mother owned were the only reliable friends I had as a child.
To this day, I’d still rather read a new book than meet a new person.