This news was kind of sad to me! I remember using our Encyclopedia Britannicas many times while growing up. Some of my teachers allowed us to get extra credit by simply turning in a report on something that interested us. I loved extra credit, so took full advantage of this offer. I'd think of a subject, look it up in the encyclopedia, write down the information, and turn it in for my extra credit. My method of research then (copying verbatim from an encyclopedia) makes me laugh now thinking about all the copyright laws that exist today! But oh how I loved my extra credit!
We had two sets of Encyclopedia Britannicas while I was growing up. One set was old, maybe published in the 1960s. I imagine it was my mom's from when she was growing up. The second set was purchased brand new in 1990 or 1991, and my parents might have purchased them from a door-to-door salesman. (Or I might just be getting that confused with the Jehovah's Witnesses that would come to our door and my mom would argue with on our front porch...but that's another story!)
Anyway, I remember the night the new encyclopedia set arrived at our house. We were so excited to get this brand new set of books were amazed at how current they were. They were so current that there was a short paragraph about Operation Desert Storm in the "O" encyclopedia. This was pretty cool to us because the war was in its very early stages when we recieved the books. In fact, I even remember telling my teacher about this and she didn't believe me, so I brought the book in to show her! I don't think she appreciated that much.
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| The Encyclopedia Britannicas I used growing up. |
I guess it makes sense to discontinue printing these books. Our world changes so quickly that most any piece like this is out of date the minute it hits the press. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I wouldn't mind if they kept printing these books and I had a set on hand at my house. Something about that just seems comforting...
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