Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc. said on
Tuesday that it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship
encyclopedia for the first time since the sets were originally published
more than 200 years ago.
The book-form of Encyclopedia Britannica has been in print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768.
It
will stop being available when the current stock runs out, the company
said. The Chicago-based company will continue to offer digital versions
of the encyclopedia.
Officials said the end of the printed, 32-volume set has been foreseen for some time.
"This
has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google," Encyclopedia Britannica
Inc. President Jorge Cauz said. "This has to do with the fact that now
Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people."
The
top year for the printed encyclopedia was 1990, when 120,000 sets were
sold, Mr Cauz said. That number fell to 40,000 just six years later in
1996, he said.
The company started exploring digital publishing
the 1970s. The first CD-ROM version was published in 1989 and a version
went online in 1994.
The final hardcover encyclopedia set is available for sale at Britannica's website for $1,395.
"The sales of printed encyclopedias have been negligible for several years," he said. "We knew this was going to come."
The
company plans to mark the end of the print version unsecured loans by making the
contents of its website available free for one week, starting on
Tuesday.
Online versions of the encyclopedia now serve more than
100 million people around the world, the company said, and are available
on mobile devices. The encyclopedia has become increasingly social as
well, Mr Cauz said, because users can send comments to editors.
"A
printed encyclopedia is obsolete the minute that you print it," he
said. "Whereas our online edition is updated continuously."
Lynne
Kobayashi of the Language, bad credit loans Literature & History section of the
Hawaii State Library notes there will always be people who prefer using
print sources over electronic sources.
However, the
proliferation of publishers of electronic databases has resulted in an
audience becoming attuned to online searching.
"There are many advantages to online searching, chief among them the ability to search within the text," Kobayashi said.
"The major disadvantage is the need for a computer or devices with access to the Internet."
Kobayashi
noted that whether she uses traditional methods in doing research or
going online depends on the question she wants answered.
"Sometimes
subject knowledge and familiarity with standard resources may get
faster results than keying in a search and sifting through results," she
said. "If the search is broader, searching across several online
sources may yield more options."
Britannica has thousands of
experts' contributors from around the world, including Nobel laureates
and world leaders such as former President Bill Clinton and Archbishop
Desmond Tutu. It also has a staff of more than 100 editors.
"To me, the most important message is that the printed edition was not what made Britannica," Mr Cauz said.
"The
most important thing about Britannica is that Britannica is relevant
and vibrant because it brings scholarly knowledge to an editorial
process to as many knowledge seekers as possible" he added.
Kobayashi
said as information professionals, librarians see an important part of
their role as directing patrons to trustworthy information sources.
"While Wikipedia has become ubiquitous, the Britannica remains a consistently more reliable source," she said.
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