Encyclopaedia Britannica to End Print Edition; Goes 100% Digital

[Rob Williams]

When I was growing up, I had fun hauling a random volume from our encyclopedia collection from the shelf and looking through it, unsure of what I was going to read about. I am sure I'm not alone. With the advent of the Internet, however, the lustre of owning an actual encyclopedia set has undoubtedly lessened for many, and with the likes of Wikipedia, the reasons for owning such a thing have become almost nonexistent.

Read through the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[Greg King]

Understandable but still kind of sad. My grandfather sold World Book Encyclopedias for extra income during his summer breaks (he was a teacher) to support his family.

Farewell giant ass volumes of books. I remember using you for reports in school before the internet made life awesome and suck simultaneously.

 

[marfig]

Indeed. I consider this a loss, more than a gain. I'd rather they kept a printed version. Even if abridged.

Due to the recent debate around the possible court case against 5 distributors of digital books, I commented with a friend about my desire for the state to win and digital book prices to finally drop to acceptable prices. My friend reaction was to agree because he would be able to buy them cheaper and it would make sense to do so since there's less costs involved in "printing" and distributing a digital copy.

I answered however that I would personally only use that to buy technical books (programming mostly since this is my area). Novels, romances, sci-fi, alas essentially all literature material, I'd still want to buy paper. It was hard for him to understand, but I don't expect it. What happens is simply that my love for books goes beyond the simple access to the writing, but also the actual physical object and the pleasure of going through its pages, collect them and put them on my library shelves.

 

[Doomsday]

No tablet or E-Book can replace the feel and reading pleasure of a good book!