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?

11 thoughts on “Artifacts of the Analog Age: Encyclopedias

  1. Lamar the Revenger says:

    My memory? That they weighed a ton!!

  2. Savage says:

    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.

    1. gabe says:

      That explains a lot 🙂

  3. Jennifer says:

    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.

    1. gabe says:

      Ha! I never heard of Funk and Wagnalls before!

  4. fluffy says:

    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 It was laughably outdated, and even what information it did have that was correct for the time was ridiculously incomplete and terse.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.

    1. gabe says:

      At least with Wikipedia, it’s the people’s encyclopedia 🙂

  5. Egypt Urnash says:

    The modern equivalent of browsing through a letter: “oh god I just spent the last six hours following links on Wikipedia”

  6. Fourthords says:

    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!

    1. gabe says:

      That’s what I’m here for, unearthing those artifacts!

      Isn’t it weird to think that they aren’t the standard any longer?

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