Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias

NY Times: A series of announcements from publishers across the globe in the last few weeks suggests that the long migration to the Internet has picked up pace, and that ahead of other books, magazines and even newspapers, the classic multivolume encyclopedia is well on its way to becoming the first casualty in the end of print.

March 17, 2008 by Uncategorized 4

You may also like...

4 Responses

  1. birdie says:
    March 17, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    this
    sort of makes sense. Poor door to door encyclopedia salesmen, are there any of those left?

    Reply
    • mdoneil says:
      March 17, 2008 at 2:57 pm

      Salesman
      I think they sit at the lunch counter drinking five-cent coffee and commiserating with the fuller brush man.

      Reply
  2. Anonymous says:
    March 17, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    this one’s actually probably true
    Unlike many “death of print” narratives, most of which are wildly exaggerated, this one’s actually probably got a ring of truth to it.

    Ditto phone books, too, probably.

    What will be interesting to see is the steel cage death-match between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica Online… 😉

    Reply
  3. Anonymous says:
    March 17, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    Still have my WorldBook 1979 set.
    I still have fun thumbing through the World Book 1979 set that my parents got for me when I was just a kid. It’s still at their house. I used to spend hours on end reading articles and chasing down related articles from the “see also” references at the end of articles.

    I guess I do that with Wikipedia, too, especially when I used to work a long, boring night shift at my last non-library employer’s…but it’s not the same…and it’s less comfortable to lie on a couch with a laptop than curled up with an encyclopedia volume. But at least these are short readings not requiring extended deep reading, and so will probably be ok to transition to online-only.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

LISNews Archives