I’ve long wanted a copy of the EB edition printed just before WWI,  a point in time before massive political and scientific change.   Just the maps from this edition would be amazing, in the same way that National Geographic issues from the late 1800s are fascinating.

One could have the Best History Class ever if they had access to the contemporary magazine and newspaper articles from key portions of history; a magazine, newspaper, or encyclopedia provides a level of context you don’t get in a textbook, even if the magazine itself is biased or not factually correct.

I realize the number of mistakes was extremely small and the chances of any real harm coming from them even smaller, but at the time the librarian and I discussed that I wondered aloud how the problem could be solved. She suggested that an electronic version of the Encyclopaedia could be updated more quickly and easily.

About a year after that conversation the Britannica Online became available, and a few years after that the library where we work purchased it–making it one of the first web resources the library added to its collection.

I had a feeling even then that the Britannica’s print days were numbered. The only thing that really surprises me is that it’s taken this long for it to end.

At least that’s what I read on the internet. 

This noun -> verb thing has been around a long time, but not like now, apparently.

They’ve been Boinged.

My parents owned an Encyclopedia Britannica set, and I thought it was very cool back then. 

Perhaps iPads and other reading devices truly will take the place of encyclopedias, but I don’t believe they can really match some of the qualities that they had and reading and learning experience they offered.  I grew up with the full World Book Encyclopedia (1960 edition that was purchased when my Mom was pregnant with me).  As a small child I’d often pluck a volume down from the shelf and sit in the big chair in the dining room next to the furnace and read and read and read.

Over the years I’d return to many articles I’d previously read and would just as often discover some I’d not yet read.  Even as I began to read voraciously by the late 60s, I realized that our set was out of date and didn’t have the latest up-to-date information on space exploration and computers.  But so much of the knowledge in that encyclopedia was timeless.  The human body.  Geography, natural resources, places, famous historical people, languages and their origins, botany, ancient history and the evolution of civilization, and on and on.  And it was there – fixed – a resource I could return to again and again.

I love Wikipedia and similarly spend hours reading it as well.  But it’s not the same experience.  I could probably say that the World Book Encyclopedia played as big a role in putting me on the path to who I am today than almost any other input in my early education.  I still believe they’re a valuable resource for children, for the same reasons.

The whole point of an encyclopedia is to make knowledge available. Today, it is no longer needed because all the knowledge a printed encyclopedia could possibly contain (without renaming a library into “encyclopedia”) isn’t merely available, but in fact ubiquitous.

We haven’t merely fulfilled the dreams of the 17th century but surpassed it far beyond anything people could have imagined.

Next year they’ll be back on the market, with six different versions readers can vote on.

They were a “modern” stone age family.

After the sprocket/cog corporate wars. The earth was left in ruins. No more flying cars, no more high rise apartments.

All Digital Media was lost..music, books, education texts. What remained was hard copy print films, books and LPs. Forgotten in the vaults of ground based libraries.

Using that media which did not require specialized players the ground dwellers rebuilt a society based on the 50′s and 60′s decades of America. LP/Film Movies/and hard copy books were the template to imitate cultures and styles.

Appliances were simulated using escaped bio engineered animals—and trained to preform specific tasks.

This is how that started: “I got a Kindle”