Encyclopedia Britannica has announced it will stop producing its classic multi-volume book sets after 244 years in print.
The company printed a new set every two years but has announced there will be no 2012 edition, leaving 2010 as the last in the series. Into the future, the company will continue to update the encyclopedia digitally and produce education tools.
Says Britannica president ... [ read the full article ]
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WOW! I recall many hours of research in the library with these volumes. Even though CD/DVD versions of these along with the Internet have been a prodiminant factor in term papers today, a whole generation is going to be deprived of hours of tedium.
I still have my World book encyclopedia my mom purchased for me in 1955. Hell, I was born 3/15/55.
Guess she was thinking ahead....
Looking at the world map makes me laugh. ...And describing pot as a narcotic...
The cool part is the transparent human body pages where you flip the page showing first the bone structure then arteries, blood vessels and capillaries, organs then the skin.
The volumes way a ton and yearly updates are soft covers.
Still sad in a way. You will need to go on line for the Britannica.
This is sad day. If an encyclopedic has the information I need, it's much more convenient reading the book versionb, vs an eye straining computer screen.
Originally posted by Jeffrey_P: I still have my World book encyclopedia my mom purchased for me in 1955. Hell, I was born 3/15/55.
The cool part is the transparent human body pages where you flip the page showing first the bone structure then arteries, blood vessels and capillaries, organs then the skin.
The volumes way a ton and yearly updates are soft covers.
My grand mother had 3 different volumes. One from around the time period you spoke. Another from around 68 and I think the last one was from around 74. That was when they still didn't care about the rain forests too. I was born in 65 & I too remember crushing my legs under the weight of those things.
Spending an hour in one of the two Referral volumes trying to get all the prerequisites so you didn't have to go back & forth, & then copying all the crap down in your note cards (including bibliography). At times I'm glad as hell we didn't have cable & video games until later.
Is it sad that i can still search a 1000 page book in less than 10 seconds and find what i'm looking for. cant say the same for my computer repository search skills
I think it is a sad day when something is important is encyclopedias are only available on the Internet. I'm sure there are still plenty of students has the do not have the lecture is using the Internet.
Of course you can go to the library and use the Internet or somewhere like that. But sometimes the convenience of having something in the form of a book is unbeatable. There's no guesswork as to what to search for and it only takes a couple of page flips to get to what you're looking for.
When I was in college I often preferred writing a report based on a book as opposed to information found on the Internet. There are just so many times when it is just so much more convenient. Plus a lot of professors would limit the amount of Internet sources I was able to use war they would at least require you to use a certain number of hardcopy sources.
For so many reasons I hate to see this happen. It makes me wonder what is next.
I think it is a sad day when something is important is encyclopedias are only available on the Internet. I'm sure there are still plenty of students has the do not have the lecture is using the Internet.
Of course you can go to the library and use the Internet or somewhere like that. But sometimes the convenience of having something in the form of a book is unbeatable. There's no guesswork as to what to search for and it only takes a couple of page flips to get to what you're looking for.
When I was in college I often preferred writing a report based on a book as opposed to information found on the Internet. There are just so many times when it is just so much more convenient. Plus a lot of professors would limit the amount of Internet sources I was able to use war they would at least require you to use a certain number of hardcopy sources.
For so many reasons I hate to see this happen. It makes me wonder what is next.
