Hi Lars,
On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 10:30 PM, Lars Aronsson<lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
I know many of you are interested in how Wikipedia's traditional
competitors are doing, especially the unusual event that new print
editions appear.
Thanks for your remarks on the situation in .se.
As you can see at
http://info.eb.com/PDFs/EB_PrePub.pdf, Britannica
will be selling a 2010-version of their 15th edition. The "fun fact"
is to advertise with a biographical entry on the Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert. You can't make up stuff like that. According to
http://www.caminfo.co.uk/pdfs/BRIT2010_001.pdf, they will tell you
*how* to start a blog. Extrapolating from this, they will explain in
their 2013/2014 edition to start a twitter account. It must be sad for
encyclopedia authors to see how PR is forced to focus on "brand new
facts", an area where the failing promises of an (printed)
encyclopedia are most visible.
Size, price, features and most of the content seem to be unchanged
from former versions.
Given EBIs still-strong position in libraries, they might have a
financial basis that will allow them to continue that path for a
while.
Mathias