Yep, I’m sorry to report that even the great Encyclopedia has fallen into the past and into absolution. When was the last time you even picked up one of these?
I remember when having to do a report or a presentation on anything, these were the only way to do research. You would have to grab like 3 different ones, lug them to a table, crack them open to reveal that distinct scent of knowledge. The pages would be thin, slick and shiny and very often stick together.
The one cool thing I miss is just randomly taking one letter, page through it and find some of the weirdest stuff. One thing I don’t miss is how they were the only definitive source of information. The internet really gives you almost every angle of a topic, not just the author’s of the book.
What are your Encyclopedic memories? Did you like using them? Do you remember this dork?
My memory? That they weighed a ton!!
My mom sold World Book Encyclopedia door-to-door when I was a kid. So we got a set of them, which we kept in my room. I’d read them when I got bored. They did help when I had school reports and when I needed to make something flat. Their chocolate brown, leather bound covers are what I liked best.
That explains a lot 🙂
My dad just got rid of our old set of Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia last year; I don’t think they had been cracked open since 1998.
Ha! I never heard of Funk and Wagnalls before!
When I was a kid we had a really old set of Encyclopedia Americana. It was laughably outdated, and even what information it did have that was correct for the time was ridiculously incomplete and terse.
Wikipedia isn’t a suitable academic citation but neither were print encyclopedias.
At least with Wikipedia, it’s the people’s encyclopedia 🙂
The modern equivalent of browsing through a letter: “oh god I just spent the last six hours following links on Wikipedia”
Agreed 🙂
Thanks for the blast from the past! My family had three sets of encyclopedias (World Book, Britannica, and another I don’t remember) from having merged households with my grandparents when I was seven. I think I last used any of them in … fifth grade (1994–1995); in middle school, the library had a copy of Grolier’s Multimedia and (later) Encarta that absolutely blew me away!
That’s what I’m here for, unearthing those artifacts!
Isn’t it weird to think that they aren’t the standard any longer?