whither encyclopedias
I must admit, I have a big soft spot in my heart for encylopedias. (Of course, I was the kind of nerdy kid that bought a dictionary for fun reading in 6th grade.) It’s probably not surprising that sales of printed encyclopedias has dropped off enormously over the last fifteen years. CNN has an article about the changing world for encyclopedia publishers at www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/11/disappearing.encyclopedia.ap/index.html. Many now offer their information over the web for a fee, and the electronic versions have many advantages, including staying current and having more multimedia options. (However, I’m beginning to wonder if they have any multimedia other than the video of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It seems like every single article and demonstration of electronic encyclopedias I have ever seen refers to or uses this same clip.)
Thing is, even when electronic encylopedias are often available in the school library, most kids head out to the web anyway. It’s just what they’re used to. We need to do a better job of steering students to other kinds of online resources (databases of periodicals, reference libraries, etc.) to make sure they have a range of resources for their work.
I also think we lose something with online resources. I’ve always enjoyed looking through old encyclopedias for a chance to see what was the most current knowledge of that day and time. Only printed material captures that moment - electronic resources change daily, and the ephemeral nature of the information will leave no snapshot for the future.
And will we need to update Encyclopedia Brown to Internet Brown? It just doesn’t have the same ring…