Tag Archives: printed books

The end of an Era—No more Encyclopedia Britannica

Posted on March 21, 2012 | 18 comments

After well over two hundred years of publication, The Encyclopedia Britannica has decided to close the doors on its presses.

No more hard bound, tangible versions. It will still, however, be available on-line.

I have mixes feelings about this. Most of them are purely sentimental. An abridged version of the Encyclopedia Britannica (One volume, that weighed about 90 pounds written in typeface you needed a magnifying glass to read) got me through all of high school and some of college. It was an old friend.

I remember those all-too-thin pages that were almost translucent. I remember the gold letters carved out on the sides of the pages to help me find my way.

I loved that book. What an incredible resource.

I believe I still have it. I think it is in my attic
(I know-not a good place for it)

I was thinking over all of the reports that I have done with my kids in the last few years. I could have dug it out, and showed them how to do “tangible” research.

This is no longer our culture. We don’t need to lug around huge volumes of encyclopedias when we can just “Google it”.

Yes, you need to be careful with internet research, but there is a wealth of information out there, and it is updated faster than any print-volume of a reference book. (As Encyclopedia Britannica found out.)

I don’t know. Part of me is still sad to see paper go. But this is a natural evolution of the age we are in.

In my novel, there is a chapter where my main character sees printed books. He is surprised, because printed books are such a luxury.

I wonder how long it will be before this is actually true in this galaxy.