Print Encyclopedia Bites the Dust...

I haven't used an Encyclopedia Britannica for quite a few years now – at a guess, not since about 1990.  And why would I?  When I see reference material in print form, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind is “Oh oh – it's probably obsolete!” 

What subject area has been static enough for paper references to be reliable?  Certainly not the areas I most frequently research: computer science, science in general, history, and politics.  Of those, history is probably the only candidate – but new discoveries pop up all the time, especially because of declassification and regime change.  For example, our understanding of Eisenhower's presidency has changed quite radically in the past few years.

So the news that the Encyclopedia Britannica's last print edition will be the current 2010 edition doesn't bother me at all.  In fact, mostly I wonder just how they managed to hang on this long.

Most of the news reports are emphasizing the role that Wikipedia (and other community-based efforts) had in killing the Encyclopedia Britannica, and that's certainly an interesting topic to ponder.  What's more likely to be reliable – a reference edited by a single team (with all their biases), or a crowd-sourced effort with many people contributing and cross-checking?  Both of these models have their own sets of problems and their own mechanisms for errors or outright lies to creep in.  If I'm researching something I care about, I'll always look at Wikipedia and multiple other sources, to make sure I'm not missing some controversy or alternative (but unexpressed on Wikipedia) perspective.  I'll also look at the edit history to see if there's a “wiki war” going on.  Such searches frequently do turn up more material that seen on Wikipedia.  But by and large, I've found the Wikipedia entries to be (a) at least not outright lies, (b) always useful at least as background, and (c) most often essentially accurate and authoritative.  After years of practice with such searches, it's hard to imagine ever relying on a single source – a la Encyclopedia Britannica – again...