On 11/27/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Now, now! EB is a fantastic book, one of the great nonfiction works of Anglophone culture. Their current marketing operation may seem to be spending far too much of its time working on running down Wikipedia rather than e.g. selling a good encyclopedia, but that doesn't lessen the respect Britannica is due.
It's a great encyclopaedia*, that's why I bought it. I just don't think it's a viable product anymore - costs too much to produce, and isn't worth enough money to enough people. Think of the paper version: apart from the cuteness of a wall of encyclopaedia, what's it actually worth to you? Would you ever use it? Could you really be bothered opening it up and manually finding an article without a search function? How about the electronic version: Wikipedia and the rest of the web being free, how much would you spend for one more source?
Steve
* Or so I've heard.