The company says it features over 25,000 photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps.Īll this paper-bound content can't possibly come cheap, you might think. The 2023 version spans 17,000 articles spread over 14,000 pages in 22 volumes. Just like my old 1968 edition, the new print edition of World Book is a physically hefty reference. Back in the day, our family's encyclopedia set took up a large dedicated shelf in our family room. Speaking of slow, a paper encyclopedia set certainly can't run away from you. While that concept seems foreign to us in our current world, there was a certain kind of comfort in that slowness. We were still largely operating at the speed of paper. At the time, even with electronic references, instantaneous, up-to-date information didn't seem as important. Evans said that sales of the print edition are "in the thousands" and that World Book always prints just enough copies to satisfy demand.Īs a kid, our family owned a 1968 edition of World Book that I relied on for school reports and projects all the way until my high school graduation in 1999, although I briefly used Microsoft Encarta on CD-ROM and a CompuServe encyclopedia in the 1990s. Despite that, some people and organizations apparently still buy paper encyclopedias. Many people rely on Wikipedia, which is a nonprofit collaborative resource, for reference purposes. Today, up-to-date information flows freely thanks to the Internet. "Because there is still a demand!" Tom Evans, World Book's editor-in-chief, told Ars over email. Yet it's the print version that mystifies and attracts my fascination.
In a nod to our present digital age, World Book also offers its encyclopedia as a subscription service through the web.
Its fiercest competitor of yore, The Encyclopedia Britannica, ended its print run in 2012 after 244 years in print. The company, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, claims that its encyclopedia is "the only general reference encyclopedia still published today." My research seems to back up this claim, at least in English it's possibly true even for languages. first published an encyclopedia in 1917, and it has released a new edition almost every year since 1925. Further Reading Encyclopædia Britannica’s 2010 edition to be its lastīased in Chicago, World Book, Inc.
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