We had an encyclopedia set in my childhood home, although at the moment I am at a loss to recall which brand.
What I can tell you, in case you missed the story, is that Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print after an astonishing 244 years. The 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds, will be its last.
This quote from a story in the New York Times pretty much says it all:
"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. "Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it's much more expansive and it has multimedia."
All true and all for the better, but I am going to feel sad and nostalgic anyway ... and see if one of my siblings can remember which encyclopedia we had when we were kids.
(Update: Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, writing on his personal blog, says he is glad to hear that Encyclopaedia Britannica will live on online, but he's concerned that its content is essentially invisible to those looking for it via Google; in other words, just about everyone.)
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