Encyclopedias

I love encyclopedias.  When I was young my parents bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias.  They choose World Book over Britannica due to the fact that my sister and I were young and World Book seemed to have more pictures.  Britannica appeared too academic I guess.I think I picked up a volume everyday for many years.  I loved to just thumb through it.  I loved the color photographs and the detail of each article.  It wasn’t until later I realized how much reference material each article had and how useful that could be.

Today with the internet some question if encyclopedias are a thing of the past.  Why pay for a set of books with information one can just look up on the internet?  Well here is my answer to that.  Many of the things I learned or was introduced to would come from just flipping through the pages of those World Book volumes.  I often had no particular subject I was interested in yet many times I would find the most fascinating articles and that would spur me to further research.  Plus I just like the feel of a real book.  I don’t like reading in depth articles online.  When I run across something like that online I print it then read.  That way I can highlight or mark certain sections and flip back on forth easily.  Some may say you can do that online and you can sort of but it’s a pain in the rear.

I looked recently at the offerings of World Book and Britannica and was amazed at the price.  I knew they were expensive even when I was young.  Britannica’s current price for a 2007 32 volume set and it is $1395.00.  Is that high?  I don’t really know.  I tried to look up World Book but got a script error so I’ll check on that again later.  But as I recall it’s up there to.

Point is I like encyclopedias and would like to get set for my family.  But dang you pay a price for real books these days.