On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 1:48 AM, Maria Fanucchi <marialadouce(a)gmail.com> wrote:
RIP Encarta.
For better or for worse, it was for many people, especially children, the
first encyclopedia they ever encountered. It may eventually have sparked the
interest of, and inspired, more than a few Wikipedians.
The first encyclopedia I encountered was a supermarket set, published
by Grolier I think, made available one volume per week in 1991. Every
grocery trip, my mother would buy me the next volume, and in a box
somewhere I still have the complete set—in fact, I used them to
fact-check some of my earliest Wikipedia articles, back when we were
still creating pages about the commonest of things, any new content
was a positive contribution, and we weren't quite so strict about
citing sources.
A few years later, my parents bought a copy of one of the first
editions of Encarta, distributed on a single CD-ROM. "Multimedia" was
still a buzzword, and having audio sprinkled throughout—even video,
for select topics—was an amazing thing. I grew up in an
anti-Microsoft household, and we ran Encarta under IBM OS/2, but
despite my prejudice, I couldn't help but find Encarta the greatest
thing ever. I was disappointed when I had read every article in less
than a week, but the proof of concept was there. (I don't think I
need to wax nostalgic any further; obviously, long story short, I got
here.)
So, yes, I do have some nostalgia for Encarta. Its day is long gone,
and this is certainly overdue, but I've never really harbored any ill
will toward it.
Let's hope some of their material can be released
(I'm hoping specifically
for some of the multimedia, such as snippets of music made with rare
instruments, and the sound files of letters, numbers and various phrases
said in many languages, by native speakers).
I second that. Even now, when I think about Encarta, the first thing
that comes to mind is a recording they had of a Baroque piece played
on the harpsichord. (Not that that's rare, but they did do a great
job deciding what pieces warranted multimedia presentation, and they
had some good ones.)
Austin