My son, however, did quickly find an upside. My kids are essentially baffled by my purchase. My wife understands my purchase but isn’t wholly enthusiastic about it. I don’t know where we’ll find space for the new set. I marveled at how much there was to know while simultaneously mourning how much I would never learn. That said, when I was a kid the experience of getting lost in the encyclopedia was so powerful that it remains one of my favorite distant memories. I grew up with the World Book encyclopedia, not Britannica. The second reason is that news of the discontinuation of the print edition threw me into a Proustian rush that overtook my senses. And even though I really had to get rid of the records - I just didn’t have the space for them - I’ve regretted that decision many times in the years since. The first is that I once unloaded my record collection, roughly 2,000 albums, because the CD revolution had begun and records were no longer being made.

So why pay so much money for a third set of something that we’d gotten rid of twice?įor me, there were at least two reasons. Neither of us felt much like hanging onto them, even before the web changed the way we all research things. Mine was a yard-sale purchase hers was a nice leather-bound set that had been a graduation gift. The fact is that my wife and I have each, separately, gotten rid of complete sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica over the years.

It arrived the other day in three heavy boxes. I am not much of an impulse buyer, but when I read that there were only 800 sets remaining - that’s what they say, at least - I jumped right in and paid nearly $1,600 to have a set shipped to my home in New York. Jim Romenesko rounds up coverage from the Times, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. Encyclopaedia Britannica has declared that its latest print edition will be its last from here on out, everything will be digital.

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