It's the end of an era of sort. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., far the biggest of the printed encyclopedias, says it will stop publishing print editions of its encyclopedia. That means the encyclopedia won't be available in book form for the first time in 244 years. But as you might guess, it will continue to publish digital versions of Encyclopedia Britannica. The company says ending the print edition of the 32 volume encyclopedia is a full commitment to on-line and digital publishing of the many educational products the company is famous for publishing. The Encyclopedia Britannica was first published in Scotland in 1768. Wow! That was a long life span. The power of the computer chip is evidenced with the death of those lovable encyclopedia books.
What this means is only one printed version will still be sold in book form in the U.S., the also aged and very popular 'World Book' encyclopedia, the one that was present and heavily referenced in just about every American school library for about two hundred years. The top year for the printed Encyclopedia Britannica was 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold. That number fell to 40,000 in 1996. The company started exploring digital publishing in the 1970s. and the first CD-ROM edition was published in 1989. Then a version went online in 1994. And from there the old format for referencing encyclopedias was doomed.
The cost of the final version of The Encyclopedia Britannica is a whopping $ 1,395, not exactly an inexpensive purchase when one can find free encyclopedias on line or pay a subscription service to use one for less than $50 a year. It used to be that having a set of encyclopedia books was a status symbol that every parent sacrificed to achieve. They have always been expensive to buy. Now prestige is more having a big screen TV or other electronic visual gadgets in the house....what a cultural decline that is! I remember as a child when my parents bought a set of the popular Compton's Encyclopedia for my brother and I.
We lived inside those books for years, its beautifully illustrated entries written by the most prominent experts in the fields of study. I'm surprised that Comptons survived in such good condition. One other advantage of the printed encyclopedia is the authoritative nature of the entries. They are written by pre eminent experts and as a result, are far superior to the "anyone can ad to it" style of Wikipedia.
So I think the greatest benefits to having a book format encyclopedia (and I still have that childhood set of Compton's today) is that all entries were written literately and by authorities of high prominence. It is not so with many on line encyclopedia's today. Too, the silly cultural entries we have today in digital encyclopedia contaminate the genuine ones, as in the latest report on the celebrity meltdown, for example.
The older book forms of encyclopedias tend to be purer and less of an entertainment medium than the on line versions. I also love the feel of the books, seeing the books in front of me (can anyone get excited about an encyclopedia volume inside a Kindle or computer?), and feeling an intimacy with the books that digital never gives. The old written encyclopedias were always more of a reassurance to me that answers could be found to questions without the endless debates and speculations found in politically correct digital ones.
However, the digital forms do have advantages, and those are what have killed the book format. With on-line encyclopedias, users can instantly send comments to editors, they can search across several online sources that may yield more options., they are faster to use, and are updated constantly. Too, as more "professional pay for use" encyclopedias become more prominent on line, perhaps the triviality in many on line encyclopedias today (Wikipedia) can be contained and the encyclopedia will retain its place in the world as a scholarly rather than trendy information source.
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