10 ms·

I bought the only physical encyclopedia still in print

• kvetching 3y ago
  I have Great Books of the Western World by Encyclopædia Britannica This is a great set to have in case of some sort of information apocalypse.
• vkazanov 3y ago
  This is a massive exaggeration. My daughter reads encyclopedias I buy for her, just as I did.l back in the day. And it wasn't horribly popular to be the book reading kid 30 years ago as well.
• dna_polymerase 3y ago
  So arstechnica now has native ads?
  • theandrewbailey 3y ago
    > Aside from the shark photo and the print error, I am genuinely proud to own a modern World Book Encyclopedia. And I say that freely, having purchased the set out of pocket myself. If the author had to buy it with his own money, it's a pretty lame sponsored post.
    • TylerE 3y ago
      There are ways to get around that, e.g. the author legitimately buys it, but for some reason his payment for that story is $1500 more than usual.
  • toast0 3y ago
    Sure, it's an arm of Conde Nast, native ads are a staple of mass market publishing.
    • cubefox 3y ago
      They do a lot of car ads, I mean reviews.
• bryanlarsen 3y ago
  In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now. Whenever I had a small number of minutes to kill I grabbed a random volume and flipped open to a random page.
  • ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
    Do you think there was better ROI to that time spent than now with the smartphone? Like, you "killed" those 5mins by learning something (however esoteric it may have been) versus sucked into a nonsensical Tik Tok vortex?
    • tomashubelbauer 3y ago
      > In the 80's the encyclopedia filled the same niche that a smartphone does for me now. I took this to mean the niche is "learning something interesting in a short amount of time" not "killing a short amount of time" so to me the OP implied they were using the smartphone to learn and not browse TikTok.
      • bryanlarsen 3y ago
        It's both? I have the attention span of a gnat so whenever I'm forced to wait in one place for more than 10 seconds I pull my phone out. I don't pull up TikTok, but I pull up HN or similar. Theoretically HN et al can be educational, but it's mostly functioning as an alternative to TikTok. This behaviour is normal today, but 40 years ago people other than me had the ability to wait patiently.
  • pstuart 3y ago
    Same in the early 70s. Bonus was the Time Life science series. There's something to be said about not having ubiquitous portable distraction devices to encourage more "productive" uses of time.
  • JKCalhoun 3y ago
    Except I don't flip to a random page on the internet. Like you, I am remembering the serendipity of the encyclopedia (and libraries for that matter).
• RegularOpossum 3y ago
  I loved reading my grandfather's 1980s edition World Book when visiting, pre internet. There was something kind of magical about that much information in one place at the time, but at a house instead of a library! Edit: I also remember browsing the Macintosh version of the Encyclopedia Britannica as one of my first school computer activities.
  • Scoundreller 3y ago
    Same with Microsoft Encarta
• Demmme 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • willcipriano 3y ago
    They won't pull it. They will change it and you won't know. "Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia."
    • behringer 3y ago
      All wikipedia history is visible. If you're worried though, download a copy today :)
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • Demmme 3y ago
      And then you solved the source of Truth problem because you got an old book? Could be a wrong.print. could be a fake. Bible is also not true just because it's some book.
    • ilyt 3y ago
      Then download today's copy of wikipedia...
  • thesuitonym 3y ago
    My takeaway from the article is that it's more about the novelty and nostalgia, but also could serve a purpose--and that purpose is more about bad information being available online than about it going away.
• milar 3y ago
  Learned a lot from this as a kid.
• acatton 3y ago
  > At a time when most information comes to us for free online (with strings attached, of course), it's easy to have sticker shock at the $1,199 retail price for the 2023 edition of World Book, although shoppers might occasionally find it for as low as $799 on Amazon (to compare, the online subscription costs $250 per year) I understand that there is some economy of scale issue. (I would expect them to have very few buyers) But this price is hard to justify. Does it cost $949 to print and ship, when comparing the online edition to the physical edition?
  • cafard 3y ago
    My guess is that the price is comparable (adjusted for inflation) to what my parents' generation paid for encyclopedias in the 1950s and 1960s.
    • thesuitonym 3y ago
      I think it's actually less when adjusted for inflation. I recall full sets like this being close to $2000 even way back when. Of course, back then you'd often "subscribe" to them, paying a smaller monthly fee and getting one book per month until you had the full set.
      • jasomill 3y ago
        Used books were a thing even way back when; as a child in the mid-'80s, I bought (with my parents' money) a complete Encyclopædia Britannica set at the opening "friends and family" night of our local public library system's annual book sale for $100 or so, in "like new" condition and barely out of date.
    • JKCalhoun 3y ago
      Funny to think that parents purchased an encyclopedia for the family the way a later generation would purchase a home computer for the family. Actually, maybe funny is the wrong word, it's kind of sweet.
  • namdnay 3y ago
• dabluecaboose 3y ago
  >When she saw the large photo of a shark spread across the spines of the 22 volumes, she frowned and said, "I don't want to see a big-ass shark every day when I walk in the room." I've got to be honest, reading this I went through a similar range of emotions as the author: Surprise that a print encyclopedia still exists, curiosity about it, and a nibbling desire to buy one. But I gotta agree with his wife: I don't want a huge shark photo on my bookshelf. It seems like an odd thing to force on a $1200 purchase, especially when it could easily be put on dust covers that could be removed to leave a more austere, proper looking reference book.
  • BadCookie 3y ago
    The 2022 edition has a dinosaur on it while the 2021 edition has eagles, for what it’s worth. I am tempted to buy the eagle one for only $350 … but I don’t really have the space for it!
  • parpfish 3y ago
    I agree. The big shark photo would be fine in a school library or classroom (especially if it helps younger users put volumes back in the correct place), but it’s completely out of place for a home library. I remember the world book as having brown/beige with gold letters. It was a boring look that actually seemed to give it authority. The photo on the cover/spine makes it seem like it’s desperate for your attention. Almost like clickbait working it’s way into the analog world
  • coldpie 3y ago
    I rather like it, actually. It's a cool photo and I find it to be a nice art piece, kind of like an art print on the wall, versus a bunch of brown book spines. But I understand your viewpoint, too. Worth remembering that their biggest customer-base by far is libraries and schools, where something like that might be a better fit than a home bookshelf.
  • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    To each their own; you can put dust covers on it for a more austere look as well.
  • 3y ago
• noefingway 3y ago
  I still have my 1966 Britannica. Learned a lot as a kid just picking a volume and reading random articles. I hate to give it up.
• midnitewarrior 3y ago
  Random Gen Z-er: "Oh look, there's a dead tree version of Wikipedia." Gen X: Dead stare, mouth open, winces, grips Encarta CDs tightly
• lifefeed 3y ago
  I don't find modern encyclopedias interesting, but the older encyclopedias (and textbooks) are fascinating. Specifically I love reading entries before major changes to a field. Like cells in 1950, right before the double helix structure of DNA was discovered. Or Germany in the inter war period, when everyone knew it was unstable, but no one was quite sure what that meant.
  • taeric 3y ago
    plate tectonics would be a fun one to look into.
  • kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Even into the mid 90s, the extinction of the dinosaurs was an unsolved question. It's really interesting to see how people thought about this over time.
  • ravenstine 3y ago
    I don't know what modern encyclopedias are like (assuming you're referring to physical ones), but I really do think I learned more from encyclopedias and textbooks than from class when I was in school. Some teachers were brilliant and could teach effectively, but in most cases I really was better off just reading through the books, which I actually enjoyed. If modern encyclopedias are like Wikipedia, then I can see how you wouldn't find them interesting. Although Wikipedia does have interesting information within it, it's now written so verbosely that my eyes glaze over most of the time. Yeah, there's simple.wikipedia.org, but it's not nearly complete enough. > Like cells in 1950, right before the double helix structure of DNA was discovered. I had a textbook in middle school that was so old that it said bacteria were believed to be a form of plant!
    • cubefox 3y ago
      > If modern encyclopedias are like Wikipedia, then I can see how you wouldn't find them interesting. Although Wikipedia does have interesting information within it, it's now written so verbosely that my eyes glaze over most of the time. Yeah, there's simple.wikipedia.org, but it's not nearly complete enough. The problem with the writing in Wikipedia articles is that they are often extremely detailed in certain aspects, because more and more people kept adding specific bits to it. But then often the overall cohesiveness of the article is lost, and it becomes hard to read. The problem is that Wikipedia articles usually don't have single authors which would ensure the article as a whole is compelling. There is actually an encyclopedia which does much better in this regard: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It's a free online source, like Wikipedia, and it is limited to topics of philosophy, but it reads so much better. Even though many of its articles are quite long. Each article is written by an expert in the field. It is the encyclopedia in analytic philosophy. One problem is that sometimes articles are slightly biased because the author has certain views, and this isn't at all obvious unless you're already an expert in this topic. Still, most articles are great.
• jasode 3y ago
  >Later, I introduced the encyclopedia to my kids. They had never used a print encyclopedia, and they looked at me like I was an alien, almost as if I were speaking a different language (such a trite expression, but man, is it accurate). I had hoped they could use the encyclopedia as an old-fashioned reference, but so far, they have completely and utterly rejected it, not even expressing interest or opening it once. That aspect of my plans for the encyclopedia has been a big failure. The kids' reaction makes perfect sense to me and I grew up with an encyclopedia set in the house. My family was poor so we couldn't afford the "nice" encyclopedia sets like Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instead, my mom bought the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia one-letter-at-a-time from the grocery store. E.g., the grocery store didn't have the entire A-to-Z set at the store. What happened was volume 'A' would be in the aisle near the checkout. You add that one book to your grocery chart. (One book wouldn't blow the whole household budget.) A few weeks later, the volume 'B' would appear. After a few months, you'd eventually end up with entire A to Z set. F&W was the "more affordable" encyclopedia and they brilliantly set up a "installment payment plan" by tapping into mom's weekly shopping habits. Very clever strategy to use supermarkets as the sales channel instead of commissioned door-to-door salesmen. But even that was too much money for us and my mom couldn't afford the entire set in one year. So the volumes she missed had to wait until next year with a new print edition which was a different color. So our encyclopedia set was a Frankenstein set combining different years. A lot of older HN readers will know what I'm talking about. I used that F&W extensively in school but I don't wish I had another set of books in the house. Today's Wikipedia is much better. It covers thousands of other niche subjects that a limited set like F&W could ever possibly include. And extensive hyperlinks to see how topic-X-leads-to-topic-Y.
  • jandrese 3y ago
    The limitations of the old style encyclopedia are immediately obvious when you go to actually use it. Thousands of articles that only barely scratch the surface on the topic. Even then if you're interested in something even mildly obscure it won't be in there at all. Of course you couldn't use it as a source when writing a paper, and worst of all they didn't even provide the sourcing information for the articles that they did have (maybe nicer ones did? The ones at my library did not), so as a research tool they were near useless. I do remember that there was an exception for the Encyclopedia Britannica, which could be used as a source as long as it wasn't the only source. For some reason it was considered more scholarly than other encyclopedias.
• JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > Opening up a volume of the World Book took me back in time. > ... > As for its content, the 2023 edition doesn't shy away from the contemporary. Yeah, there's a weird schism there. I am considering now trolling the local thrift stores and antique malls for a complete encyclopedia set — but one perhaps from the 70's or 80's. I'll save a bundle and can go back to a world that frankly seemed a lot more optimistic.
  • thesuitonym 3y ago
    If you do, make sure you read the section on the USSR. See how optimistic it seems then.
    • eesmith 3y ago
      https://archive.org/details/worldbookencyclo20worl/page/180/mode/2up?q=%22Soviet+Socialist%22 https://archive.org/details/worldbookencyclo20worl/page/180/... > U.S.S.R. stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the official name of Russia. See Russia. For Russia, https://archive.org/details/worldbookencyclo0016unse_f8g2/page/520/mode/2up?q=Russia https://archive.org/details/worldbookencyclo0016unse_f8g2/pa... I don't see much optimism, but I didn't read it closely. There is a lot of "it sucks to live in Russia."
• devsegal 3y ago
  I have a picture of myself with about 22 encyclopedias in the back of a van. Memories I would pay millions to see in Video/VR.
• acadapter 3y ago
  Does anyone know of a good English translation of Naturalis Historia, by the way?
• unsupp0rted 3y ago
  $1200 for the set, in case you were wondering like I was. https://www.worldbook.com/worldbookencyclopedia2023 https://www.worldbook.com/worldbookencyclopedia2023
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• T3RMINATED 3y ago
  [dead]
• _xnmw 3y ago
  I would buy a historical edition of Brittanica, not a 2023 version of the World Book. It would be eye-opening to see how people thought of the world before the speed and hyper-connectivity of the internet.
  • toast0 3y ago
    If you have a 'buy nothing' community, just lurk on there. Many enclopedia sets go, I got a 1990 Brittanica with the yearly update volume for nothing a couple years ago. If nothing else, I've got monitor risers for life.
• mcphage 3y ago
  I have tons of memories of reading my parents' World Book Encyclopedia growing up. Honestly, getting a print copy for my kids to browse through doesn't seem a bad idea.
  • cubefox 3y ago
    Though the reports indicate that kids don't like them.
    • mcphage 3y ago
      Sorry, did you say something? I was just sitting here leafing through my encyclopedias...
• F00Fbug 3y ago
  My parents had Encyclopedia Britannica and I'm convinced that was a huge benefit to me that I'm still realizing today. I was born in 1965 and can remember even in elementary school any time I had a question my parents couldn't answer we'd look it up in the EB. Pretty soon I was habituated to just go there on my own and look up anything. When bored I'd pull out a random volume and just flip through it looking for anything that caught my eye. I'm sure that was no small expense for my parents, but it really was an investment in us kids! It's wonderful having access to all that and more on your phone, but there was something special about that long row of brown volumes. I was always excited when the annual supplement came; my brother and I would flip through it to see what new knowledge had been discovered!
  • pizzafeelsright 3y ago
    Younger but very similar. Read A to S. I started T and went to college. I think it cost about $2.5k. What's odd is my parents never read it as they were illiterate. I found most of the topics were very short. Going in depth was limited to the library books. Picking six books only to find them referencing themselves was annoying. Six books with 130% total page content between them. I did learn how to read, skim, absorb content. I also discovered most people simply repeat information instead of using or validating.
    • jstarfish 3y ago
      > What's odd is my parents never read it as they were illiterate. Not odd. If they're anything like my family, they would have bought it hoping it would help you escape the same fate. > Younger but very similar. Read A to S. I started T and went to college. The animal kingdom has long suffered from overfamiliarity with aardvarks and the existential denial of zebras ;)
  • RandallBrown 3y ago
    I grew up with World Book encyclopedias and it was very much the same. Until we got a computer. Encarta was the coolest thing I had ever used and I spent hours playing with the interactive encyclopedia. After that I hardly touched the printed books.
• karmakaze 3y ago
  I grew up with the World Book set as well. Seemed like there were more books/pages (or maybe thicker pages/smaller print). We also had a set of Funk and Wagnalls as well as a Disney set of the future world. They were a constant passtime, but even as a child certain topics ended far too briefly. Today we have Wikipedia to follow up.
• danjoredd 3y ago
  I have been meaning to get one myself. Problem is it is so darn expensive
  • cubefox 3y ago
    They are much cheaper if the edition is just a bit older, like 2020.
• G3rn0ti 3y ago
  In Germany the „Brockhaus Enzyklopädie“ used to have its place in every academic house hold. The 24 volume version filled an entire cupboard on its own, cost thousands but looked great with the volumes’ red shaded back and golden rims. Especially historic and technical articles were quite large and detailed and helped me with many homework assignments in the age before the Internet. They were much better than the typical CD-ROM based encyclopedias. I am lucky to own the last print edition from back in 2006 (inherited from my father) that even contains an entry explaining what „Wikipedia“ is. My kids never want to use it. It’s depressing and amusing at the same time.
  • Tomte 3y ago
    I have Der Kleine Brockhaus (one volume) from 1925. I'm sometimes reading it for fun. For example, "Feminism" is "effeminate nature in men; also: women's movement". It's a fascinating view into not so long ago.
• srvmshr 3y ago
  I used to go to my school library's reference section because I loved to read the Brittanica Does anyone know what kind of paper was used for its printing? It was good in quality to not have bleed through, but sheer enough to have several hundred pages per volume.
• aimor 3y ago
  I had a number of volumes of really nice looking books on the shelf growing up. There was the encyclopedia set which was ok, but also collections of stories, museum collections, city reference books. They're great because you can grab anything and usually find interesting well written good quality content. Even the worst of them, and there are bad books, are at least well written. Anyway, I recently found out the volumes were selected by my architect uncle to coordinate with the built-in bookshelves. They were just intended as a visual prop, but I've taken a few of the classics and museum sets with me and still enjoy flipping through.
• mwcampbell 3y ago
  > in print form, accessible to all That's a contradiction, albeit surely an unintentional one. Only electronic text is fully and automatically accessible to the blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic. I assume that in this context, "accessible to all" is intended to mean that it's accessible to people without computers. How big a problem is that these days?
  • pharrington 3y ago
    Not to mention the $1000+ price tag, and it taking up a ton of physical space. Print encyclopedias are definitely a luxury.
  • humanistbot 3y ago
    Also, this encyclopedia is only accessible to those who pay $1200, who can only access it if they are physically in the room where the buyer has installed it. That's not accessible in my view.
    • hoppyhoppy2 3y ago
      The context in the article was public and school libraries as buyers.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• hedora 3y ago
  We have an old set, and some friends were over with their third grader, who had to write a report. She tried using wikipedia, but it popped up a 30 page article on an advanced topic she was trying to find a definition of. I handed her the encyclopedia, and showed her how to look up the word. One paragraph later, she said "that's EXACTLY what I needed." Indeed.
  • simbas 3y ago
    Try simple English Wikipedia
• bookofjoe 3y ago
  This got my attention. I recall reading my World Book encyclopedia back when I was a kid in the 1950s for many, many absorbing hours. Tremendous enjoyment. I see that Amazon's selling the 2023 edition for $1200 BUT World Book is selling the 2022 edition new for $500 and the 2021 edition new for $400. There are many eBay sellers offering the 2020 edition used for $300. This might be the best present EVER for my now 7-year-old grandson who can read but whose parents limit his iPad use to 1 hour/day.
• rufus_foreman 3y ago
  I had Encyclopedia Britannica in the house as a kid and it was great to just open up a random volume and pick something to read about. A few times I made an attempt to read the whole thing from A to Z. Never got very far, but I know a lot about aardvarks.
• AlbertCory 3y ago
  I would totally read this in the dentist waiting room, instead of looking at my phone or the TV. Everyone thought vinyl records were dead, but here we are: https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126 https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126 Still, I'm not buying a set. Takes up too much space.
• ilyt 3y ago
  > My family's reaction was disappointing, but I don't mind that the encyclopedia set is just for me. That's just coping after burning a bit of money on an useless shelf decoration... I'm sure he will use it occasionally instead of wikipedia just to feel he didn't threw away that money.
  • kvetching 3y ago
    >for the information apocalypse
    • ilyt 3y ago
      I wrote it in other comment but just...copy wikipedia locally if that's your problem ?
  • lurquer 3y ago
    I bought a new set in 2009 to ‘enrich’ the kids. They never read it, but the books came in handy for crafts when you need to weight something down and for securing marble-coaster and hotwheel tracks at the top of the stairs. I started reading them from start to finish. Gave up after a while, but at least I now know a lot of trivia about things that start with A, B, C, and D.
• irusensei 3y ago
  I remember using the Barsa[0] encyclopedia as a source for homework. We went to my grandfather's house where this imposing collection of red and gold hard cover books rested at the higher shelf. Even an adult had to get on a chair to reach there. I'm pretty sure is still there almost as a trophy or decoration piece. It's probably useless nowadays and I'm pretty sure it still lists the Soviet Union and Rhodesia as countries. Back when I've used those books they already had the smell of old books. And yes I would love to have those books for myself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsa_(encyclopedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsa_(encyclopedia)
• zafka 3y ago
  My quiet, somewhat socially anxious mother sold World Book door to door in the late sixties to get her family a copy for free. I really think those volumes were greatly responsible for the positive trends in my life. I loved reading the World book and following where the bread crumbs led. As I write this more comes back- I remember "E" was probably the best starting point with all the electricity articles. Amazingly, although not detailed, the recipe for gunpowder was there. Ah the memories :) Thank you World Book and most of all Thank You Mom!!
  • agambrahma 3y ago
    Similar, except my favorite was the combination W-X-Y-Z Lots of history in "W" :-|
    • zafka 3y ago
      I remember redirecting from article to article. Sometimes I would end in a loop. Even back then I sometimes became suspicious that unknown forces were hiding some things from me. Too many times tantalizing subjects would be mentioned and then dropped with no further information available.
• cxr 3y ago
  > First, I'll be honest: The existence of an up-to-date print encyclopedia in 2023 took me by surprise. In contrast, the fact that there is only one remaining (English-language) print encyclopedia is something that took me by surprise. I'm not sure how many is reasonable to expect, but I'd have thought it was >1.
• deleted 3y ago
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• didgetmaster 3y ago
  I inherited the set of WB Encyclopedias my parents bought for our family when I was a kid. We could not sell them in the yard sale and the library didn't want them as a donation. I decided to keep them as a 'decoration' for my new office. There is some nostalgia for me and I will probably crack one open now and then. I think it is naïve to believe that just because the Internet is full of disinformation that alters regularly at the speed of light; that a print version will protect you from that. While the older versions are less likely to be infiltrated; the biases have existed long enough that plenty of propaganda has made it into print.
• cubefox 3y ago
  I probably would have appreciated such an encyclopedia as a kid. I actually got a "computer encyclopedia" (a single heavy book with way over a thousand pages) as a birthday present once, and I simply read through it from start to finish, brute force style, skipping only the most boring articles. My attention span was almost unlimited back then.
  • mayormcmatt 3y ago
    When MS Encarta came out in 1993 our household got it, too. I did the same thing on our 486 beige box: just hit the arrow button on articles, reading through as many as I could. With my Reddit habit probably soon coming to an end, it might be a good time to readjust my attention span, haha.
• mayormcmatt 3y ago
  My parents bought a set of World Book when my sister and I were in elementary school. It might be the most important purchase they ever made for our education, as it not only helped with our information gathering for reports and whatnot, but was entertainment for us when bored. We loved just hopping into a random page and reading about whatever that thing was. It made me the info-junkie I am today, I think. This has got me thinking about buying a set for my friends with kids (I'll check with them first and see if they have the shelf real estate).
  • jamesash 3y ago
    Bought a World Book set at last year's Berkshire Hathaway meeting, for something like $650 including shipping. Awesome deal. My kids (10, 8) earn "check marks" for each 20 minute chunk of time they spend reading it, which they can trade in for various goodies. Usually before they go to sleep Edit: Also, they have used it for school projects. 2nd grader had projects on Poland, Neil Armstrong, and pygmy rattlesnakes this year. Very handy as an introduction to a wide variety of topics.
    • mayormcmatt 3y ago
      Whoa, that's really affordable! Thanks for the tip.
• UncleSlacky 3y ago
  I still have my 1979 set (with 1980 Year Book!) - I traded in a 1952 set I inherited from a (much older) cousin. Funnily enough, a lot of the articles were the same (quite a few of the experiments, in particular) and of course the articles about pre-Eisenhower presidents. It's great for stabilizing my freestanding Ikea bookshelf, though.
• westcort 3y ago
  I used the world book (2021) to reduce the need for computer use in my kids. They have computers, but they are Alphamsmart Danas and they can use them to write, code in C, play chess, and read books I load on there. The World Book has great articles and I learn plenty from it too. One unique thing is the authors of each article are listed. When I read an interesting article, I email the author and engage with them further, which often leads to more interesting insights.
• Ekaros 3y ago
  I have local encylopedia from 1928... It is also interesting alternative. Just to get some different perspective on history. Now I think I might need to look for something even older, if there is anything available for cheap.
• dfan 3y ago
  I still possess my grandfather's 1911 Encylopedia Britannica. I didn't fully realize just how old it was until I looked up Nicholas II and the entry began by identifying him as the current Tsar of Russia.
• alaxsxaq 3y ago
  I still have great memories laying on the living room floor reading volume after volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica during family TV evenings. The set came with a language dictionary covering 5-10 languages; I spent endless hours "learning" Russian and Arabic from that book. I still have those books and the cabinet they were sold with.
• LeoPanthera 3y ago
  My favorite reference book is "Desk Ref", which is the larger fatter version of "Pocket Ref". Obviously everything in it can be looked up online, but I just don't like being tied to having an internet connection. I don't have the greatest memory in the world, and am happy to outsource my knowledge to an outboard secondary brain, so actual physical reference books are quite reassuring to me.
• dudeinhawaii 3y ago
  I credit my grandma's encyclopedia Britannica from the 70s with sparking my interest in engineering. In particular, there were these very detailed diagrams of every stage of the moon landing as well as diagrams of rockets from the Mercury to the Saturn V. It was fairly magical in a time before Wikipedia. I think the fact that it was higher-level and structured benefited me. Nowadays it's much easier to dive deep into something which is kind of beautiful. If you want to see the detailed schematics for the Saturn V, it's a click away. If you want to sit down and program on a simulated guidance computer, you can (MoonJS). I do wonder if my younger self would be able to "go broad" when presented with information this easy to attain. I notice my nephews have a tendency to "go deep" and at age 8 they're diving into every nuanced detail of something like the Titanic and then re-creating it in Minecraft. I envy that access to information at a young age but I wonder if it prevents them from going broad when they're fixated on a particular topic for a year. Overall, I think I'd still prefer Wikipedia if I was born today.
• JohnFen 3y ago
  I've been seriously thinking about getting a complete set of good printed encyclopedias. I am inspired now. Perhaps I can find a secondhand set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
• dizzydes 3y ago
  One thing that the internet is (mostly) missing here is discoverability, finding something entirely random and new as you flick through.
  • gen220 3y ago
    Unaffiliated, but https://wiby.me/surprise/ https://wiby.me/surprise/ is great. :)
• gen220 3y ago
  Born in the late 90s, I spent an absurd amount of time on wikipedia in my teens. It's lack of depth on common topics at the time led me to libraries and the world of books. As an adult, it's amazing to see how far Wikipedia has come. In spite of its perennial and well-documented issues, it has to be one of humanity's biggest accomplishments. I think teaching "the youth" how to efficiently investigate and retrieve information is probably one of the best skills we can pass on. In 2023, I'm not sure if there's much utility for a "generic" encyclopedia in that skill tree. Although encyclopedias with an intentionally-constrained focus are still pretty valuable, IME.
• gareve 3y ago
  Sounds like: We want to invest on AI and this is our exclusive training dataset.
• novaRom 3y ago
  I don't speak Danish but I remember how amazing is their encyclopedia "Lille Salmonsen", one I "read" every evening in my hotel room in Kopenhagen. It was 1940 edition. Somehow with my German and English, and a bit of common knowledge, I could "read" it and it's really interesting, illustrated encyclopedia, reflecting Danish history, language, character, and probably their "thinking". This is one of those physical books I would like to have at least in our local public library.
• wtcactus 3y ago
  For me, the idea of having it on paper, is also that the definition of words can't be changed to please modern sensibilities. I reckon I don't have an encyclopaedia – my parents didn't have that much money growing up, and now, I don't have that much space available (not sure if they are even printed in my language anymore). But I do have a very prized (personally) big dictionary from the 80s, that my father used with his studies. It's scary, to see how certain words totally changed their meaning in a few decades, and it's great to be able to go and look them out to get some context on a few themes. Be certain, that the Overton window, did move radically in one direction.
• FpUser 3y ago
  Encyclopedia and World Atlas were my best friends since I learned how to read. Still have very warm feelings.
• HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
  We had a printed encyclopedia growing up - I assume it was bought used, but don't know. My Dad was an academic which must be part of why he saw value in it. I forget which encyclopedia it was, but something pretty comprehensive occupying a couple of feet of shelf space. As a kid I read the entire encyclopedia cover to cover from A-Z! Hard to say what I retained from that, but no doubt quite a bit, as well as the curiosities that were satisfied even if the content was later forgotten. I couldn't see doing the same with WikiPedia - there's something about the finite physicality of a set of encyclopedias that does seem to beckon for them to be read!
• equivocates 3y ago
  My parents had a set of encyclopedia Britannica from 1987. Problem is they got it for me in 1997.
• somat 3y ago
  Growing up in the 80's we had a set of 1960's world book encyclopedias. I would read them for fun. Sort of the same sort of thing as hitting random on wikipedia today, but in alphabetical order. Admittedly I suspect my love of reading is largely due to not having a tv growing up. Some people say they read the dictionary for fun, which I never understood, dictionaries are boring. encyclopedias are much more interesting. (probably why I am unable to spell worth a damn today) And if you were wondering C was the best volume, although I cant remember why.
  • jkubicek 3y ago
    I liked the old encyclopedias so much more than the modern ones, as a kid it was fun to look up articles that were significantly outdated. "Here's an artist's rendering of life on Venus may look like"
    • somat 3y ago
      Hard to quantify without a set of both side by side to compare. But the writing was better in the old ones. I would describe it as more technically competent.
• robwwilliams 3y ago
  Many older generation scholars had the same gut feeling about the 1911 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and claimed, with some justice, that it was the last “truly” comprehensive summary of human knowledge. Of course this was due to the mismatch between the maximum practical and economical size of an encyclopedia and the rate of gain of knowledge beginning in the early 20th century. When I was 23 years old in 1976 I won a $125 award at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley for a faster way to stock the wards. I bought a gorgeous leather-bound gilt-edged copy of the 1911 Britannica for precisely $125 at a huge used bookstore in downtown Oakland—-all 29 volumes, each volume just under 1000 pages. That 11th edition has always held a place of honor in our home (well, my significant other does not have quite the same warm feelings as I do since $125 was a bucket-load of money when we were getting started). It makes for interesting reading. It would be amusing to add the World Book encyclopedia of 2044 to the collection although I doubt my kids or grandkids would be quite as amused as me.
  • quartz 3y ago
    For anyone interested, the entire 11th edition is available online from a few sources: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=britannica11 http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=brit...
• pessimizer 3y ago
  If you're old, when we were kids we needed encyclopedias to read anything (esp. nonfiction.) You can't understand a book if you don't know any of its references, and you're not going to go to the library to look up all of them. All you had is what you'd stored up in your head, and the encyclopedias in the basement. They were nice to kill idle time following references, just like Wikipedia is now, but they were essential for reading nonfiction at home.
• casey2 3y ago
  If your goal is an offline wikipedia then try https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/kiwix/zim/ https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/kiwix/zim/ with the http server from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiwix Other mirrors exist carring different sitesrips. https://mirror.accum.se/mirror/kiwix.org/zim/ https://mirror.accum.se/mirror/kiwix.org/zim/ https://ftp.fau.de/kiwix/zim/ https://ftp.fau.de/kiwix/zim/ Between http-serve, git clone, yt-dl and various emulators internet access is hardly a necessity unless you enjoy seeding or arguing, and the latter is currently being deprecated by local models.
• williamDafoe 3y ago
  World Book was always the most terrible Encyclopedia when I was growing up 1968-1984. Overly short articles and tons of color pictures; only suitable for 10-yrs and younger. When sent to do a book report in my elementary School library I knew I would always come up short on information if I relied on "The World Book." Encyclopedia Americana was the thing to own and was IMHO better than the Brittainica. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Americana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Americana . We owned the Encyclopedia Americana, The Book of Science (a 10-volume science encyclopedia), and a family medical guide.
• shmde 3y ago
  We have the 1997 edition. It costed us 1,000₹/12$ for a single book( it has around 30 in a set) which was a lot of money for my dad in 1997. Surprisingly the color photos still pop, the page quality is brilliant and it's built like a freaking tank. It was like browsing the internet during the late 1990s.
• Lerinsmooris23 3y ago
  [dead]
• Projectiboga 3y ago
  The original Encyclopedias in the 1700s was a major catalyst similar in impact to the internet for us. Especially when specialized ones developed in the 19th century. The cool thing about using a Encyclopedia is the random encounters with things outside of your initial search. I'd argue it has a higher information density in your field of view when you look at a pair of pages. Of course I'm an early Gen-X who continued to use research libraries well into the 21st century. I still advise youth to use library time as part of research as the serendipity of finding other information both within you interest in the general shelf area, seeing similar periodicals and even just other articles within a journal. And any university's reference sections are loaded with simply amazing stuff ontop of their information index subscriptions.