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I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

arstechnica.com

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Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#61

Post by aimor »

I had a number of volumes of really nice looking books on the shelf growing up. There was the encyclopedia set which was ok, but also collections of stories, museum collections, city reference books. They're great because you can grab anything and usually find interesting well written good quality content. Even the worst of them, and there are bad books, are at least well written.

Anyway, I recently found out the volumes were selected by my architect uncle to coordinate with the built-in bookshelves. They were just intended as a visual prop, but I've taken a few of the classics and museum sets with me and still enjoy flipping through.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#62

Post by mwcampbell »

> in print form, accessible to all

That's a contradiction, albeit surely an unintentional one. Only electronic text is fully and automatically accessible to the blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic. I assume that in this context, "accessible to all" is intended to mean that it's accessible to people without computers. How big a problem is that these days?

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#63

Post by TylerE »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #4
dna_polymerase wrote: post #2

So arstechnica now has native ads?

> Aside from the shark photo and the print error, I am genuinely proud to own a modern World Book Encyclopedia. And I say that freely, having purchased the set out of pocket myself. If the author had to buy it with his own money, it's a pretty lame sponsored post.

There are ways to get around that, e.g. the author legitimately buys it, but for some reason his payment for that story is $1500 more than usual.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#64

Post by hedora »

We have an old set, and some friends were over with their third grader, who had to write a report. She tried using wikipedia, but it popped up a 30 page article on an advanced topic she was trying to find a definition of.

I handed her the encyclopedia, and showed her how to look up the word. One paragraph later, she said "that's EXACTLY what I needed."

Indeed.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#65

Post by kevinmchugh »

lifefeed wrote: post #22

I don't find modern encyclopedias interesting, but the older encyclopedias (and textbooks) are fascinating. Specifically I love reading entries before major changes to a field. Like cells in 1950, right before the double helix structure of DNA was discovered. Or Germany in the inter war period, when everyone knew it was unstable, but no one was quite sure what that meant.

Even into the mid 90s, the extinction of the dinosaurs was an unsolved question. It's really interesting to see how people thought about this over time.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#66

Post by pharrington »

mwcampbell wrote: post #62

> in print form, accessible to all That's a contradiction, albeit surely an unintentional one. Only electronic text is fully and automatically accessible to the blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic. I assume that in this context, "accessible to all" is intended to mean that it's accessible to people without computers. How big a problem is that these days?

Not to mention the $1000+ price tag, and it taking up a ton of physical space. Print encyclopedias are definitely a luxury.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#67

Post by bigbillheck »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #19
acatton wrote: post #9

> At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few b…

That sounds so cheap to me. My 11th edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica cost maybe $4000, and I have to do maintenance to fight off dust mites and red rot. But it looks very good, and it's widely considered the best Encyclopedia. Apprently Wikipedia started out as a project to digitize 11th Britannica. It's public domain now, so you can read it on your phone free if you're interested in ruining all the charm.

> it's widely considered the best Encyclopedia

I've been hearing this since the pre-web days. Most of the people saying it, as I remember, were either Jerry Pournelle or his fellow travelers, and even as a youth I had to wonder how much of that was just nostalgia for the peak of the British Empire and all that went along with it.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#68

Post by ravenstine »

lifefeed wrote: post #22

I don't find modern encyclopedias interesting, but the older encyclopedias (and textbooks) are fascinating. Specifically I love reading entries before major changes to a field. Like cells in 1950, right before the double helix structure of DNA was discovered. Or Germany in the inter war period, when everyone knew it was unstable, but no one was quite sure what that meant.

I don't know what modern encyclopedias are like (assuming you're referring to physical ones), but I really do think I learned more from encyclopedias and textbooks than from class when I was in school. Some teachers were brilliant and could teach effectively, but in most cases I really was better off just reading through the books, which I actually enjoyed.

If modern encyclopedias are like Wikipedia, then I can see how you wouldn't find them interesting. Although Wikipedia does have interesting information within it, it's now written so verbosely that my eyes glaze over most of the time. Yeah, there's simple.wikipedia.org, but it's not nearly complete enough.

> Like cells in 1950, right before the double helix structure of DNA was discovered.

I had a textbook in middle school that was so old that it said bacteria were believed to be a form of plant!

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#69

Post by bookofjoe »

This got my attention. I recall reading my World Book encyclopedia back when I was a kid in the 1950s for many, many absorbing hours. Tremendous enjoyment.

I see that Amazon's selling the 2023 edition for $1200 BUT World Book is selling the 2022 edition new for $500 and the 2021 edition new for $400. There are many eBay sellers offering the 2020 edition used for $300.

This might be the best present EVER for my now 7-year-old grandson who can read but whose parents limit his iPad use to 1 hour/day.

Re: I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

#70

Post by rufus_foreman »

I had Encyclopedia Britannica in the house as a kid and it was great to just open up a random volume and pick something to read about.

A few times I made an attempt to read the whole thing from A to Z. Never got very far, but I know a lot about aardvarks.

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