How ironic that Encyclopaedia Britannica was trending on Twitter earlier today, due to the earth-shattering announcement that it would cease publication of its printed edition.
The most surprising thing about this
news was that I was actually convinced they'd stopped printing the thing some
years back. It's precisely the sort of reference product that nowadays
can serve its market much better in a constantly updateable digital format.
A chum won a set of these encyclopaedias a few years back. Fortunately he lives in a mahoosive house in the frozen north and was thus able to devote the necessary shelf space for all the volumes in one of his many living rooms.
In most households that would be the sort of valuable space required for a giant plasma TV.
I refuse to get over-excited, or indeed overwrought, about the end of a printed product that quite simply was unable to justify its existence in printed form.
I'm much more interested in 21st century printed products - including all the 'new' printing being generated via the internet - that do.
