It's weird, but I kinda wouldn't mind having a set of the last Encyclopaedia Britannica. The zenith of 244 years of tradition, an emblem of the transition of our knowledge to an online space, and still very functional in a quaint way...
> It's weird, but I kinda wouldn't mind having a set of the last Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Yeah, that idea is only nice to ponder, not to implement. I had a 32 volume set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk_%26_Wagnalls ). They are so heavy! Every time I moved ... the horror ... I'm glad I donated all of them.
I had a 1957 set for nearly 20 years until I gave it to a neighbor in 2004 when I was relocating. He still has it.
It has the Atlas and the dedicated bookcase.
For anything up until the 20th century (e.g. the ancient and medieval worlds), it was probably as good as or better than the current edition - something has to be cut to cover Steve Jobs, the Space Shuttle and the George's Bush.
I will probably find myself another set, but I don't care if it is particularly recent. I can always use Wikipedia if I want to study Pokemon.
Not to mention they're just Gorgeous. I had a set I picked up at a thrift store just for the look - Wikipedia's faster, but damn, Britannica had Gravitas.
I would be willing to bet that a 2011 edition of the EB will still be readable by your great-grandchildren but any hard-drives you bequeath them won't.
Slight nit-pick, but I doubt that the 2010 edition is the zenith. Not sure which is, but I would expect it to be from somewhere before the internet started making it redundant.
The article says they have 4000 out of the 12000 that they printed of the 2010 edition still sitting in a warehouse. Maybe they'll give you a discount.
