End Of An Era of the Day: Encyclopedia Britannica, the mother of all alphabetized knowledge, will be putting its 244-year-old print business out to pasture effective immediately.
This makes the august encyclopedia publisher’s 32-volume 2010 edition the last of its kind.
This makes me sad. When I was 7 we moved to Germany at Christmas time. All our boxes from Canada were weeks away from arriving so we had NO presents. How do parents explain to a 7 and 6 year old, who had just flown across the Atlantic and away from everything and everyone they knew, that there was going to be a late Christmas this year.
We landed in Germany on Christmas Eve. My Dad went out to find something, anything he could get us. What he found was a large chocolate bar for each of us and a huge box that had been left on his work desk. It was something he had ordered before he left Canada about a month before the rest of our family did.
What was in the box was a complete set of World Book Encyclopedias who were the main competitor to Encyclopedia Britannica. For the rest of that holiday my folks looked through the books with us and showed us all kinds of things about history and science and all the other great information you could find in those books.
I think it was the best Christmas we ever had. We didn't have much but those books were the cornerstone of my Dad's parenting philosophy - his children were going to college and the University. Over the next decade I used those encyclopedias a great deal and even liked to read them on my down time.
But now times have changed and our sources for information are found on the Internet. No more need for such quaint relics as encyclopedias. Soon even textbooks will be obsolete and maybe that's the way things need to be.
I am having a bad week where I am really feeling my age. Usually letting go of the past is hard for me anyways. While I was having my beard trimmed last week the salon played music from a classic radio station. I knew the words to every single one of the damn songs on the air. I have become one of those people who no longer follows the newest popular music. I used to know every fresh tune but sometimes in the 90s, I stopped buying new music. I can't believe I now watch Saturday Night Live for the new groups than the lame comedy sketches.
I am definitely going to be an angry, bitter old man.
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10 comments:
What a coiencidence! I kid you not, I also received a set of the World Book Encyclopedia as a Christmas gift when I was about 7 or 8. Though to me they were just foundation for my book forts and had colorful pictures of other countries inside.
I remember a full set of Britancia was the grand prize to contestants on "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego", and that was a big deal according to my dad. Now whenever I think of the encyclopedia, I think of that scene from "Dr. No", were the air headed Honey Ryder tells James Bond that she didn't go to school, instead she read the encyclopedia from A to Z, and I've always wondered if you really could get a full education by doing that.
Also by crazy random happenstance I also got a trim at the hair studio recently were the radio was playing the "Classics" with a full hour of Michael Jackson songs. Not quite my time but getting closer.
A more shocking realization came when they re-released "Phantom Menace" and I realized that over a decade had past since the original hit theaters. Yikes.
That is a spooky series of coincidences. I read the enclyclopedias for fun as a kid and I think that just rounded out my education.
Most kids has to re-do the maps and charts found when writing an essay about a Country. I had access to high tech early military photocopies that produced their images on that shiny paper. Then all I had to do was color.
It was a whole process.
I adored the World Book encyclopedias at school! I read them all, for fun. Yes, I was that kind of kid.
RIP, encyclopedias.
I still have my parents set of encyclopedias in a box in the shed. They were my source of knowledge for all things relevant.
Shout-out from a man your own age. I feel the same melancholy as older things fall by the wayside, but I also love this brave new world (and I know you do to; how could you have your Cave of Cool in any decade before this one)? The two loves aren't mutually exclusive. Lines from (of all sources) Heaven's Gate:
Billy Irvine (John Hurt): "Jim, do you remember the good, gone days?"
James Averill (Kris Kristofferson): "Clearer and better, every day I get older."
What do you mean...'GOING to be' LOL just kidding mate
Sad really but for a person that works in the printing industry it's not a surprise. Digital Media is the direction we are going to and despite what am being told the internet/smart phones and electronic media is effecting the printed world.Will books completely go away? No but there will be less of them in the world.
We were a "World Book Encyclopedia" family. Whenever I had a question my parents had the same answer: Look it up.
That taught me lots of stuff, but more importantly it taught me HOW to learn. My years at university honed that skill, but it was the World Book that first taught me how to find things out.
Now we have the internet at our fingertips but very few people know how to find information from it that is relevant or even accurate.
As for being melancholy about growing older -- pish! I went through that phase for a while but I have decided that instead of getting older and grumbling about it I would work to become better at living.
(Having kids helps with staying current, of course).
I need to go back to the classroom. I was hip once. Kids always keep you current.
I was hip once too. Back in the 60s & 70s. Now that I hit 60, staying current is not a big concern. I miss being out of it, but I kinda look at it as that's the way things are. The old goes away and the new takes over, until it's time for them to go etc. M.D. is right though. There's tons of things to occupy your mind. I find that I'm as busy now as I was 30 yrs. ago., and I don't even have to stay relevant.
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