# Were (are) encyclopedias legit **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 13, 2024, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223 "2024-04-13T05:41:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/21 "2024-04-13T14:19:29Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I suppose the idea that parents need to spend a lot relative to their income for an encyclopedia in their home in order for their kids to get a decent education is kinda scammy. That’s what I meant . ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/22 "2024-04-13T14:25:59Z")
Enciclopaedias are legit by the third person singular in the present, indicative, active form. The other persons are lego, legis, (skip legit, we had that already), legimus, legitis, legunt. It’s right by [Romanes eunt domus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8), surprised it has not been mentioned yet. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/23 "2024-04-13T14:41:40Z")
World Book 1988. I don’t recall if we had yearbooks, though maybe for a couple of years. We moved in 1990 and I’m pretty sure no new books were added then. I loved reading them and looking through the photos. The human anatomy illustrations were so beautiful. I don’t know if any teachers do this but I’ve always thought that there’s huge educational value in the fact that they become outdated. An academic exercise of comparing the articles between different editions from different years, examining the scientific changes (what does the article on “DNA” say in 1963, 1988, 2000…?), the geopolitical changes (Ceylon becoming Sri Lanka) and the cultural biases and social changes (how did articles on “African Americans” or “homosexuality” change?). Media literacy, fact checking, critical thinking…there’s much to explore with a couple of sets of encyclopaedia from different eras. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/24 "2024-04-13T14:55:22Z")
Prior to the internet (which was predicted and hoped for by a lot of writers, includfing H.G. Wells, Murray Leinster, Arthur C. Clarke, Vannevar Bush, and others) how were you going to gather facts that would be useful and put them together in one place? It was rightly praised when Denis Diderot started releasing his in 1751. Encyclopedias never could have put all the world’s knowledge in one compact space, and I don’t think anyone ever propose that they would. But most people, when informing themselves on a topic, don’t need “a drink from a firehose”. What they need is a grounding in the essential points, and a guide to where to get further iformation. I grew up on the World Book Encyclopedia, because my uncle was a salesman for it. Don’t put down the door-to-door nature of the selling. That, too, was a product of the times. Back when the USA was rural, and people didn’t often get to the metropolitan areas with their bookstores, selling subscriptions for books was the way a lot of them got published. Mark Twain’s _The Innocents Abroad_ was sold by subscription before publication, or else it never would have been published. The world is richer for it. World Book wasn’t the Britannica, but it was more than adequate for our needs. Besides, there were the yearly “World Year” supplements. (You got gummed tabs to put in the regular encyclopedia at the relevant pages to let you know there had been an update). Later on there was the “Science Year” supplement, too. I learned a lot out of that encyclopedia (still on the shelf at my mother’s house). One of the definitions of a _dullard_ was “Someone who can look up a topic in the encyclopedia and then stop.” ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/25 "2024-04-13T15:12:11Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > they bought the encyclopedia before I was born , and even though they kept it updated with yearbooks for a few years by the time I was 10 (1973) it was way out of date. I would have been much better off if they hadn’t bought them - my parents would have had to take me to the library to use newer encyclopedias and books I’m not much older than you, but didn’t have access to a library until high school. We had an encyclopedia and I loved it. There wasn’t anything else that came even close, in my world. In today’s perspective they pale, perhaps. And I wouldn’t buy one today. But that’s not the right perspective for judging them on their own merits. BTW nobody ever claimed they were supposed to contain all knowledge. How would dead books know what we had for breakfast that morning? ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/26 "2024-04-13T15:34:06Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Were they ever really an attempt to collect all the vital worlds info those 20(?) something volumes? One is reminded of the Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation in the Asimov books, which was supposedly an attempt to actually collect and collate ALL currently known knowledge. Later in the series, it was revealed that this was rather a red herring. From Wikipedia: " The _Encyclopedia_ is later revealed to be an element in an act of misdirection, with its real purpose being to concentrate a group of knowledgeable scientists on a remote, resource-poor planet named [Terminus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminus_(fictional_planet)), with the long-term aim of revitalizing the technologically stagnant and scientifically dormant empire." ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/27 "2024-04-13T15:54:12Z")
Even the _Funk_ & _Wagnalls_ were pretty useful and ours came from the A&P (defunct supermarket mega-chain). These were a little odd though, brief articles on a lot of important figures in history but 13 pages on brewing beer. If I recall correctly, The initial version Microsoft Encarta bought the rights to use _Funk_ & _Wagnalls_ articles. I caught on to this by literally recognizing some of the articles. Cite: [Encarta - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta#Background) Oh, that’s kind of cool, the project had an internal codename of Gandalf. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/28 "2024-04-13T16:24:07Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No, they were not a scam, although there may have been some shady knock-offs. They were the best that we could do with the technology of the day to bring together a comprehensive body of basic knowledge This. Of course all the information in the world wouldn’t fit into them. But that didn’t make them a scam, any more than a “History of [Whatever]” book is essentially a scam just because however large it is there are always going to be things left out. They were used by adults, too, not only children. Much of the information in them would have been difficult for most people to get at otherwise; certainly not without leaving home. And lots of things were sold door to door. Some of them were quite high quality. I miss the Fuller Brush Man. > [@TriPolar](#): > > Encyclopediæ are available at public and school libraries. In the library only; you can’t take them out. And the nearest library may be a ten or twenty or more round trip for a rural family, and take the time of multiple family members to get a child there, both for the travel time and for all the time spent reading. Many city people can’t just trot next door to the library, either, even if it is close to next door and not halfway across town; a child may be too young to safely go there alone, an adult may need to stay home with the child and/or to keep an eye on dinner cooking. > [@mnemosyne](#): > > I don’t know if any teachers do this but I’ve always thought that there’s huge educational value in the fact that they become outdated. Oh yes indeed. The old ones are often educational now in entirely different ways than was originally intended. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/29 "2024-04-13T16:25:26Z")
I just did a quick reconnoiter of my bookshelves. We have a set of Encyclopedia Britannica (from my husband’s side) from 1967 and a Funk & Wagnalls (from my childhood) from 1969. The Brittanica is housed in its own bookshelf with just enough extra room for a Book of the Year at the end; ours is from 1982. My inlaws left their set when we bought their house in that year, and my mom gave us hers after we had our first child in 1989. No one had any idea of the coming changes in information technology in the 80’s, but by the time our eldest was school-aged, the idea of buying an expensive set of paper reference books was a lot less attractive. My kids used the volumes as a sort of time capsule; I can tell that they did read them, if only because I found a Yu-Gi-Oh card in the A volume of the F&W just now while looking for the copyright date. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/30 "2024-04-13T16:28:29Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > The old ones are often educational now in entirely different ways than was originally intended. For example, the 1911 edition of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_. > **[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Eleventh_Edition)** > > The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the public domain and is readily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has b... > [@](#): > > Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, has entered the [public domain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain) and is readily available on the Internet. Its use in modern scholarship and as a reliable source has been deemed problematic due to the outdated nature of some of its content.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_Eleventh_Edition#cite_note-1) Modern scholars have deemed some articles as [cultural artifacts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_artifact) of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Additionally, the 11th edition has retained considerable value as a time capsule of scientific and historical information, as well as scholarly attitudes of the era immediately preceding [World War I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I). ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/31 "2024-04-13T16:42:17Z")
Ooh yes, the _Book of Knowledge_ is what we had growing up. Because it wasn’t alphabetical, it leant itself to picking up a volume at random and leafing through while eating your corn flakes; I bet I’m not the only one who did this. The articles were aimed at pre-teen and teenagers, with illustrated fables, craft and science projects (how to make a periscope or a crystal radio), overviews of music and wars, etc. I recall getting into trouble for cutting out a flag of a country for a school book report; it was practically the only thing that was in color. Ir came with some other sets, like one focused on science (one volume had the eclipse sequence on its cover), another set about lands and places (with the Taj Mahal on one of the covers), and one written at a college level, which barely got touched. It must my poor farmer parents a ton of money, but they got used. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/32 "2024-04-13T16:50:53Z")
My dad was a printer. Growing up, we had 4 sets of encyclopedias: Americana, Britannica, Britannica Jr., and REALLY OLD World Book that we were allowed to cut the pictures out of for school reports. had a couple of neighbors in the 90s who worked for Britannica. The company was hit really hard, really fast by the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/33 "2024-04-13T17:04:10Z")
Diderot spent twenty-five years adding to the work he started in 1751. But they were not published at that time. For many essays, school projects, speeches and such a trip to the school encyclopedias was pretty much expected and learning to use them was in itself considered a valuable skill. The transparent pages showing layered muscles and bones, or a few other topics were well liked in our home. It got some use, but the school version might have sufficed. I think it cost a few hundred dollars for perhaps twenty volumes. My mother bought a replica of the first Brittanica which was published on its 200th (150th?) anniversary. The old world maps had huge white spots labelled “Parts Unknown”, which was exciting enough to influence the C-string of wrestlers who had to fight against someone with an actual theme song and birthplace. The articles were about as progressive as you might expect - not so much. It seemed like a miracle when _the whole encyclopedia_ was available on one compact disc. Until Jimmy Wales and those meddling kids… (shakes fist at sun)… **Did encyclopedias quit because they were _too_ legit?** ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/34 "2024-04-13T17:46:54Z")
Leave that card there for prosperity to find. Now I wanna go look through the set I have. I bet there some things left in there. Books bearing little gifts are my favorite thing in the world. I’ve found many treats including some cash money. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/35 "2024-04-13T17:52:25Z")
I was born in 1955. My dad bought a set of World Book encyclopedias to help with my education. As a kid I did occasionally like flipping through them. I especially enjoyed the clear plastic pages that showed human anatomy. Funny side note, about the only specific thing I remember is a cartoon (I can’t remember what article it was referencing) but it showed two cars headed towards each other at night, and one driver ( to the horror of his wife) is yelling “if he won’t dim his lights, I’ll be darned if I’ll dim mine”. Of course I used them for school reports “Is the center of the earth hollow?” But by the time I was using them some of the information was already outdated. Every time I asked my dad something he would say, go look it up in the encyclopedia. Right after I got married, a DtD salesman came knocking. He had posters, graphs and other whiz bang sales aids. He said if he could use our ‘endorsements’ we would be featured in upcoming sales materials. As such, he was offering us a deep discount if we bought that day. My wife was all over it. I passed. The next day I priced them out, you could by them retail at a substantially cheaper rate than what he was offering. That left a bad taste in my mouth. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/36 "2024-04-13T19:03:41Z")
In the 1960s my parents acquired a 1952 World Book set for free, with all the yearly supplement volumes too. They had no shortage of Cold War propaganda in the articles on current political topics, and even the main photo of Hitler’s bio had a caption that he would have been a Communist if he’d been brought up among their ranks instead. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/37 "2024-04-13T19:22:20Z")
All you ancients and nobody mentioned Jiminy Cricket spelling out [E-N-C-Y-C-L-O-P-E-D-I-A](https://youtu.be/cy2jWJtO3lE?si=lXDHJ8a3A8nt-oBs) on the Mickey Mouse Club? I learned how to spell it from him. I still hear the song in my head every time I write out the word. Ironic, since my parents couldn’t afford even a cheap set, so I never had any reliance on them. And for the OP, here’s a book that addresses the question, “Is the encyclopedic project fundamentally flawed?” [A Brief History of Encyclopedias: From Pliny to Wikipedia](https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Encyclopedias-Wikipedia-Histories/dp/1843919737), by Andrew Brown. It’s from 2011, when Wikipedia was still somewhat déclassé rather than the first source for everything, so the Wikipedia chapter is actually the weakest one. But the range and breadth of encyclopedias in all countries and in all times shows that the concept of gathering knowledge on multiple subjects is nigh universal and invaluable. Wikipedia is the best ever, but that doesn’t mean the earlier weren’t important, even though they had many flaws. (That people knew about throughout all our adult lifetimes. See [The Myth of the Britannica](https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Britannica-H-Einbinder/dp/B0000CHBOZ/ref=monarch_sidesheet) from 1964.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/38 "2024-04-13T19:26:22Z")
We got our World Book in 1964 or so via a relative who got a substantial teacher’s discount. When I did a term paper I used the Britannica in the library, but the diversity of articles in the World Book was what hooked me. I read it cover to cover up to the “I” volume, and I did a hypertext experiment, long before links or hypertext, by taking a random article, reading it, then reading the first referenced article and so on. (The second reference if I had read the first already.) I recorded the article titles I read, I got to a couple of hundred. Yeah, now everyone does this on YouTube, but in 1967 it was pretty mind expanding. BTW I used the online Britannica as a reference for several sections of a book I was writing, and most of the articles were very good, much better than their Wiki equivalents. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/39 "2024-04-13T21:21:57Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > [@TriPolar](#): > > > > Encyclopediæ are available at public and school libraries. > > In the library only; you can’t take them out. And the nearest library may be a ten or twenty or more round trip for a rural family, and take the time of multiple family members to get a child there, both for the travel time and for all the time spent reading. Many city people can’t just trot next door to the library, either, even if it is close to next door and not halfway across town; a child may be too young to safely go there alone, an adult may need to stay home with the child and/or to keep an eye on dinner cooking Exactly this, thank you. There is a vast difference between having to leave home and travel to a library and sit at a table reading an encyclopedia and having the same resource always accessible in the comfort of your own home. This especially applies to something as eminently readable as the Book of Knowledge. I have warm and fuzzy memories of being curled up with a volume night after night. The Book of Knowledge is probably what inspired my interest in science and all that reading probably helped to elevate my childhood level of literacy. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > had a couple of neighbors in the 90s who worked for Britannica. The company was hit really hard, really fast by the internet. The internet was mentioned a few times here. It’s worth noting that the internet underwent major transformations in the course of its history, and there were effectively several different kinds of internet as it evolved. Even after it transitioned from being strictly an academic and research network to a more public one, it remained basically a communications infrastructure until the next big change that began literally in the final few years of the 20th century. The two things that started to happen really fast that transformed the internet into “all the knowledge of humankind” was the introduction of the first truly effective search engine, Alta Vista, in December, 1995, and more and more information sources coming online. By 1998, with Alta Vista in full swing, the “searchable internet” was becoming recognizable as the internet we have today, and Google was launched later that year. This is what killed encyclopedias, and Wikipedia, launched in 2001, was the final nail in the coffin. So it’s not too far off base to opine that the new millennium gave birth to the internet as we know it. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2024, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223/40 "2024-04-13T21:46:07Z")
For both you and @thorny_locust, I referenced libraries when the cost of an encyclopedia is too high for a parent’s economic conditions and pointed out there are less expensive and just as useful ways for parents to provide educational benefits to their children. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-are-encyclopedias-legit/1000223.md?page=3)