Encyclopaedia Britannica Print Edition Discontinued After 244 Years

[Arthur]

What took them so long?

 

Source: www.britannica.com/blogs/2012/03/change/

 

Change: It’s Okay. Really.

For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment as well as comfort to their owners and users around the world.

 

They’ve always been there. Year after year. Since 1768. Every. Single. Day.

 

But not forever.

 

Today we’ve announced that we will discontinue the 32-volume printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica when our current inventory is gone.

 

A momentous event? In some ways, yes; the set is, after all, nearly a quarter of a millennium old. But in a larger sense this is just another historical data point in the evolution of human knowledge.

 

For one thing, the encyclopedia will live on—in bigger, more numerous, and more vibrant digital forms. And just as important, we the publishers are poised, in the digital era, to serve knowledge and learning in new ways that go way beyond reference works. In fact, we already do.

 

http://i.imgur.com/1HHGN.jpg

 

Encyclopedia Britannica halts print publication after 244 years « The Guardian

Its legacy winds back through centuries and across continents, past the birth of America to the waning days of the Enlightenment. It is a record of humanity's achievements in war and peace, art and science, exploration and discovery. It has been taken to represent the sum of all human knowledge.

 

And now it's going out of print.

 

The Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that after 244 years, dozens of editions and more than 7m sets sold, no new editions will be put to paper. The 32 volumes of the 2010 installment, it turns out, were the last. Future editions will live exclusively online.

 

For some readers the news will provoke malaise at the wayward course of this misguided age. Others will wonder, in the era of Wikipedia, what took the dinosaur so long to die. Neither view quite captures the company or the crossroads. (Source)

 

http://i.imgur.com/I8AoB.jpg

Edited March 14, 2012 by Arthur