New York Times:
After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered sets of reference books that were once sold door to door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, the company is expected to announce on Wednesday.
In a nod to the realities of the digital age — and, in particular, the competition from the hugely popular Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools, company executives said.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica was probably the first “adult” books I ever read as a kid. They opened the world up to a fat little kid in Nova Scotia.
I had the 1971 edition. My mom kept it when I moved out. They supplemented the set with specific-subject “research reports” you could mail away for.
I remember as a kid sitting down and reading them, back to front. I got through the J’s. 🙂
We still have the 1976 set of WorldBook Encyclopedia and have no clue who to give it to. Schools we asked deem it too old while others say they no longer have shelf space for books..wow. Have a feeling WB will be following EB’s move very soon.
Yeah – “information” books that old are only good for kindling/bird cages now.
I remember as a kid, whenever I would ask my dad about something, he would point to the shelf with our 1970s edition and say “Look it up.” It drove me batty, but it was a great lesson.
I do hope that they develop an iBooks edition. It would be wonderful to have that and not simply have to navigate a webpage.
kindling 🙁 Christ it’d be a scene right out of Fahrenheit 451. And the young ones ask, “Farh.. wha??” 😉
My Britannica Fourteenth Edition (copyright 1929, 1930) just made a forlorn sound over in its case. (One of the dumbing down step functions happened after that edition.)