From USA Today:
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Encyclopaedia Britannica turns a page, ends print edition
By Judy Keen
After 244 years and more than 7 million printed sets, the company is announcing today that it will no longer publish a print edition. The last, 32-volume print version, published in 2010, weighs 129 pounds and sells for $1,395.
Only 12,000 sets of the final edition were printed, company President Jorge Cauz says, and 4,000 remain in its inventory.
In an increasingly digital world where the online Encyclopaedia Britannica — which is much larger than the printed version — is updated every 20 minutes, Cauz says, publishing on paper no longer makes sense.
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You can read the entire article here.
4 comments:
My H.S. librarian is probably turning over in her grave over this news. I remember the lessons of how to properly use dictionaries and encyclopedias and how they were the starting place for any decent research paper. Still, there is something about having a book in one's hands. Though I use GOOGLE BOOKS in my academic work, I still find myself looking through Amazon and Abebooks for original copies of some of the works. I wonder if kids today will look upon their Kindle the same way 30 or 40 years hence?
As an ardent fan of Wikipedia, I'm not too surprised by this, but I am a bit saddened. All of our digital information is so dependent upon reliable electicity.
Some part of me worries, however, that should our world pass through a cataclysm of some sort and the internet ceases to exist as soon as the lights go out - what will happen to all of our knowledge? At least books have to be physically destroyed in order to lose their potential.
Daniel, it wouldn't even require a world-wide power outage. One well placed virus could do tremendous damage to our knowledge base.
Back to the middle ages in a week.
I work in the printing industry and know its power, and its liabilities/vulnerabilities. That's why I buy print. I spend the money to have ink on paper. At least, I can make candles to read by.
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