We cannot deal with every single cartoon character, we cannot deal with every love life of every celebrity.īut we need to have an alternative where facts really matter.
“We have very different value propositions,” Mr. Cauz said that he believed Britannica’s competitive advantage with Wikipedia came from its prestigious sources, its carefully edited entries and the trust that was tied to the brand. Worthy of a mention in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And it has nearly four million articles in English, including some on pop culture topics that would not be considered Wikipedia also regularly meets the 21st-century mandate of providing instantly updated material. The world, and it has been gradually accepted as a largely accurate and comprehensive source, even by many scholars and academics.
The site is now written and edited by tens of thousands of contributors around Since it was started 11 years ago, Wikipedia has moved a long way toward replacing the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds.
Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments.īut in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely overtaken by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, including specialized Web sites and the hugely popular - and free - online In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”
“Some people will feel sad about itĪnd nostalgic about it. “It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. The last print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project. In an acknowledgment of the realities of the digital age - and of competition from the Web site Wikipedia - Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias andĮducational curriculum for schools. Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were once sold door-to-door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, company executives Ángel Franco/The New York Times A set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the shelves of the New York Public Library.Īfter 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.