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Ear to the Ground

Venerated Encyclopedia Goes Out of Print

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Posted on Mar 14, 2012
Shishberg (CC-BY)

Leafing aimlessly through the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s thousands of delicate pages will become a thing of the past. The company has decided to cease publishing its bound version after 244 years, scores of editions and more than 7 million sets sold. —ARK

The Guardian:

Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc, suggested that the encyclopedia was already something of a relic within the company itself, which has long since moved its main business away from its trademark publication and into online educational tools.

“The company has changed from a reference provider to an instructional solutions provider,” Cauz said. He projects that only 15% of the company’s revenue this year will come from its namesake publication, mostly through subscriptions and app purchases. “The vast majority” of the remaining 85% of revenue is expected to come from educational products and services, said Cauz, who declined to provide dollar amounts but said the company was profitable.

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By Matt Spencer, May 15, 2012 at 9:19 pm Link to this comment

It was only a matter of time before the venerable encyclopedia company would be forced to stop producing its famous encyclopedia. The internet has had that effect on plenty of print media, from newpapers to books. I believe that it will be a matter of time before even the Oxford or Longman dictionaries will be forced to stop production due to the ease of obtaining similar information online.

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By OzarkMichael, March 16, 2012 at 8:14 pm Link to this comment

I used to read EB since I was 13. I have my parent’s old set. The more I play around on the internet the less I played with EB. havent picked one up in a year. Ah well.

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By croaky, March 15, 2012 at 6:55 pm Link to this comment

Since childhood, I have always loved the Encyclopedia Britannica. What a loss and yet, perhaps it’s another adjustment to make in this world of the WWB.

I love reading under a lamp, so now I’ll have to sit here… at the ‘puter, unless hubby wants it.

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By PatrickHenry, March 15, 2012 at 3:33 am Link to this comment

It will be easier to manipulate history this way.

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By Robespierre115, March 14, 2012 at 9:29 pm Link to this comment

Sadly will anyone really notice the switch? People don’t read anymore and when they do its junk food for the brain, just look at Amazon’s bestseller list. The lost of print mediums is tragic and people might come to the realization when it’s too late.

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By gerard, March 14, 2012 at 6:23 pm Link to this comment

Yeah, but in spite of the vast advantages of the Internet, we’ll have WikiLeaks all locked up and we still won’t know what’s going on, let alone what might be coming up ahead. But that’s okay, because we didn’t want to do anything to prevent it anyway.  Que sera, Sarah.

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