Encyclopedia Britannica takes extended rest
Did you feel it Wednesday, March 14?
Did you notice when an American tradition — nay, an American institution — was put to sleep?
After 244 years, the Encyclopedia Britannica is dead.
There was no fanfare, no lighting of eternal torches or solemn pyres set out to sea in search of publishing Valhalla.
Granted, that may be because the oldest English-language encyclopedia will still be produced, but only digitally. But there’s something … strange about living in a world without the heavy, bound volumes that occupied so many Americans’ shelves. (Emphasis on heavy; the last edition, 2010, was 32 books and weighed 129 pounds.) With the ubiquity of the Internet and the ease and reliability of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica and its ilk have been a thing of the past for about more than a decade, but still, it’s odd that they are now, literally, a thing of the past.
(Yes, I just said Wikipedia was reliable. It is. Deal with it; and then Google the 2005 study in the journal “Nature” comparing its accuracy to that of Britannica.)
My generation is likely the last to have actually used the book version of the timeless encyclopedia. (Though not always as intended; I can vividly remember using less useful letters as a way to prop up a wobbly table in my room as a teen.) And somewhere in my parents attic the books continue to collect dust.
The New York Times broke the news a day before the official announcement by putting the books’ importance in context, calling them “coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books” that were “displayed as proud fixtures in American homes.” In the Times’ recounting of the Britannica’s place in history, the series was a stand-in for middle-class success in America.
“In the 1950s, having the Encyclopedia 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 middle class,” wrote Julie Bosman on the Times’ Media Decoder blog.
(That this news of a relic of the printed past going kaput was broke on a blog is a bit of ironically corollary commentary, no?)
It’s not hard to understand that this obituary was only a matter of time. It’s hard to imagine many Americans being willing to shell out $1,395 to buy the books, especially considering how much more unwieldy 129 pounds of books are as opposed to a single — and free — URL address. (Speaking of, how cruel is it that there is an Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Wikipedia?)
Plus, the price tag is simply absurd in today’s computer world. I’d likely be willing to wager an even more sizable sum that I could poll every single person I know, plus anyone I meet on the street and not find more than a handful that would take the 32 Britannica books over a laptop that the $1,395 could buy. (Or you could get seven iPhones, if that’s your thing.)
So it’s no surprise that only 8,000 copies of the last edition have been sold, with 4,000 more sitting in a warehouse. But perhaps the 2010 edition’s status as the last of a storied institution will prompt an uptick in orders. (Perhaps.)
Still, even if they sold every last 2010 copy it would be a far cry from the Britannica’s peak in 1990, when its fleet of door-to-door salesman hawked 120,000 sets in the United States. (Don’t cry for Britannica, Argentina; the print product makes up less than 1 percent of the company’s revenue, the Times reported.)
And while the Britannica may be moving to the afterlife, it has good company in a cultural cemetery full of the Internet’s victims, including the book store and the travel agent (Some chicken littles imagine the very medium you’re reading right now is about to punch a ticket.)
Yet, even if the Britannica is a dinosaur (they’re both extinct, get it!?), it’s hard not to get a warm and fuzzy feeling of nostalgia from flipping through the tomes. The feel of the pages, the simple joy of stumbling on an unexpectedly interesting entry and the simple joy of the search for an entry will all have a special place in many an American’s memory.
The Encyclopedia Britannica may be dead — but it won’t be forgotten.
If you’d like to make an offer for that old Szuminsky set of encyclopedias, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.