Recently, when we moved, my sons found several volumes of an old encyclopedia set abandoned in the new attic. They could tell just by looking at them that these were books of distinction by the way they were bound. Bringing the treasures they had found to show me, they asked, “What are these?”
“Encyclopedias,” I told them to which their only response was staring at me as if I were speaking some Martian language. “You know, like Encyclopedia Brown,” I coaxed hoping they would remember the stories of the boy genius I loved as a child and read to them as toddlers.
Finally, a light bulb went off if my 5th graders head. “You mean like Wikipedia?” he asked. I shook my head and realized what Encyclopedia Britannica just announced, that printed volumes are a thing of the past. Once the source of reference for all general knowledge is now obsolete, the tomes of information are being shelved in favor of digital formats.
Encyclopedia Britannica recognizes the decision to discontinue physical publications after 244 years as a momentous event. Their blog cites the change as “another historical data point in the evolution of human knowledge” as important as the step they took in the 1980s when they began offering digital information.
Like most of my contemporaries, I remember mulling over encyclopedias to complete my middle school assignments. In the days before Google, it was the solo source for kids who needed to find out what aardvarks eat, who was president during the civil war, how far the earth is from the sun or when the first Olympic games were held.
Every year new information was appended with additional volumes and it was always fun to reminisce over the previous year’s events when it arrived. It was like a yearbook for the world. Now information is updated daily with millions of posts and downloads across the internet.
Savvy searchers who don’t always cite their sources can find a significant savings over the $1400 price tag that comes on the 32 volume printed set just by poking around the web. Don’t distress though, digital and downloadable content will still be available from Encyclopedia Britannica for a yearly subscription fee of $70.
Like many publishing companies they are shifting their focus to mobile communication devices and e-readers. Database features of the online encyclopedia match search and citation easy and connect subscribers with desired content quickly. Additional interactions are also available as technology has advanced by bringing research off the page.
Still it’s kind of sad to think many kids won’t know what it’s like to slip an encyclopedia off the shelf and flip through the pages of precious information knowing that the book in your hand is a starting point to all knowledge. As for my boys, we dusted off the volumes they found and added them to our current collection.
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