The history of Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 'done printing' This is, however, part of a trend that assumes expertise is overvalued. Today, most technology users value connectivity and experience. Newspapers and magazines are in decline, bloggers and content aggregators are on the ascendant. The problem with crowd-sourcing the answer to any particular question is, of course, that you're as likely to find ideologically driven opinion as hard fact.
You also have little in the way of support for judgments about credibility, reliability, and accuracy. Ours is a society that cannot afford to do without a postal service, daily newspapers, and expertly edited sources of public knowledge. The notion that all knowledge is available online within six clicks is both exciting and a bit frightening have you Googled yourself, your friends, or your children to see what's online, including images? The disappearance of our printed sources of information poses two serious concerns.
First, our antiquated, overtaxed, patchwork power grid is perennially on the verge of collapse. Chinese hackers, aging components, or an F4 tornado could take down large segments of our power supply. No power, no Internet. Second, just two-thirds of all Americans have access to the Internet at work or home.
Those of us who live with an iPhone, Blackberry, tablet device or a desktop computer seem to think just about everyone is connected. They were among my favorite windows into ideas and the larger world, and a mainstay of my academics until college.
Today, I cannot imagine why a parent — or school — would buy any encyclopedia in book form. That's why my only surprise at hearing that Britannica will no longer be printed is that the decision took so long to make.
It's not the only overdue cessation of a print product, of course, but a genuine milestone in the history of shared human knowledge. Yet, as the company is telling journalists , this is not a death knell for the wealth of knowledge it has accumulated.
The company has been moving more and more online, and shifting its business model; it will be fascinating to see how that material moves forward in this digital era.
The printed Britannica's days have been numbered for well over a decade, and it's not Wikipedia that foretold its demise. The credit more properly goes to Microsoft's pioneering Encarta, a CD-Rom product the software company launched in the early s and maintained until in several formats including, late in its life, a web version.
Encarta wasn't as good as Britannica. It didn't have to be. It was good enough to become a useful reference aid to countless people. Ask your professor if you plan to do so. The reason for this prohibition has to do with the function of reference works. Encyclopedias are best suited to providing background information rather than in-depth analysis or novel perspective. The "conversation" among literary scholars and historians—or academics in any other discipline for that matter—does not occur within the pages or pixels of encyclopedia articles.
Wikipedia is " written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world" and relies on the collective wisdom of its volunteers to get the facts right and to balance the opinions expressed. Wikipedia, of course, can be very useful as a starting point for many topics, especially obscure ones or those with passing or popular interest.
Wikipedia articles often reflect the enthusiasm of their anonymous author s for the subject. Articles are sometimes too detailed , making it difficult for uninitiated readers to identify important themes. As with any other reference work, most faculty instruct students not to cite Wikipedia. But some faculty go further, advising students not to consult Wikipedia as a background source. Prohibitions of this nature, fairly uncommon nowadays, typically result from the volunteer approach to editing taken by Wikipedia, which can be unreliable.
In order to be safe, think of Wikipedia as the first stop on a research road trip.
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