It is no surprise that since the development of the Internet print sales of the publication have gone south. The epitome of an encyclopedia is to get quick, accurate information about just any topic. Although I think the Internet is great, I find it sad that this "historic" information source will no longer be tangible. It doesn't surprise me that last year print editions only accounted for 15% of the company's revenue, and didn't cover what it cost to produce it.
The story is not all sad however, Britannica will still be selling a product online. The company has increasingly been selling their electronic edition and has been extremely well received by schools and institutions. One of the major positive attributes of the online edition is that the encyclopedia is continually updated and kept accurate. Although you'd have to be reading a very old copy, topics such as Persia (instead of Iran) would be outdated. To me, that's one o the cooler parts of having something like that outdated and unchanged. It wouldn't be useful for current factual information, but it's interesting, and sad to see a perspective gone. There will no longer be a time where you can look to this historical publication and see what was previously perceived as fact.
It will be kind of odd that most newspapers will no longer exist in the near future, and you can even say the same for post offices with the introduction of email as well as UPS and Fedex. But on the other hand most of our generation arent't buying newspapers because we have grown up during this internet era. Books are another soon to be lost art with the technology of kindles and ipads there will be no need to buy a book and waste space when it can easily fit on your technology of choice.
ReplyDeleteI think the decrease and soon decease of newspaper printing will save trees! Times are changing and although it is hard for some to except change, in this case i think we are changing for the better.
ReplyDelete