[Rob Lister]

A watershed moment?

(Reuters) - In yet another sign of the growing dominance of the digital publishing market, the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print is moving solely into the digital age.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, which has been in continuous print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768, said Tuesday it will end publication of its printed editions and continue with digital versions available online.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82C1FS20120314

They hung on a lot longer than I thought possible.

The company said it will keep selling print editions until the current stock of around 4000 sets ran out.

So...10 years or so. :|

But here's the crux, bolded by me, buried in an unrelated blurb.

"The print edition became more difficult to maintain and wasn't the best physical element to deliver the quality of our database and the quality of our editorial," Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., told Reuters.

It's what distinguishes them from sources such as ... Wikipedia.

With its scholarly, reliable reputation, Encyclopedia Britannica had not been affected by the popularity of free website Wikipedia, he said.

I'm sure he believes that but I'm not at all sure he is being honest with himself.

From another website:

Wikipedia kills off Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least in print
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/...le+Feedfetcher
...

With the content within Encyclopaedia Britannica coming from reputable and knowledgeable sources, it still is a top-tier source for students — and respected by educators — even though a 2005 study by Nature showed Britannica had nearly the same amount of errors in its articles, on average, as Wikipedia. I guess image is everything.

That sums up my view, too. I still wouldn't use Wiki as a reference source for anything more important than an internet discussion forum. Wiki is however a great jumping off point for finding out anything ... particularly things with few political ties. OTOH, Not even EB would be a very good reference source, since, unlike Wiki, their articles generally do not include footnotes. So, Wiki would actually be a better starting point; neither is a good ending point.

Let's take a look. Below are two articles on Slovakia. I picked Slovakia because it is one of the freely available EB articles. The first link is from EB and the second from Wiki.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...49008/Slovakia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovakia

Both articles are comprehensive. I'm not going to do a item-item comparison. The EB articles is better presented, style-wise, but the Wiki article is better organized (the Wiki style seems to assume a certain level of ADD in its audience and provides a TOC). Also note that most every fact in Wiki is footnoted. There are no footnotes in the EB article. Wiki has a 'discussion' page you can review for points of contention. With EB, all discussion is outside the public domain. All-in-all -- Scholastic Point: Wiki.

This all noted, there is a future for reference materials in book form. While the usefulness and speed of the Internet is nice, for some nothing beats the printed word. Yes the market has shrunk dramatically, but I strongly believe there’s too many of us old fashioned folks out there to let it completely die. Would you?

Yep. I would. Or at least I wouldn't spend my dollars to keep it breathing. Others are welcome to spend theirs.