In the late 1980s, when I was still very young, a traveling salesman convinced my parents to buy a set of World Book encyclopedias. I might have been in the kindergarten age range at the time, but they had already decided on home-schooling me, so this must have been seen as an investment in my education. I think it was a good one. We lived a few miles outside of town, so I wasn't exactly able to ride my bicycle to the library on a whim.
At the time, libraries were purely analog. We had to get our information from the reference section, or pore through the nonfiction stacks after searching the card catalog. That card catalog was a literal cabinet filled with index cards briefly describing everything in the library collection. The dawn of DOS-based computerized catalogs was still in the future, at least in my rural Minnesota library system.
This set of books was a springboard into anything I wanted to learn, and I was an eager learner from a very young age. The set is still on a shelf in my parents' living room bookcase. It includes a research guide and index volume, and cross-references topics at the end of many articles. It was an amazing repository of general knowledge about almost anything I needed to know as a student.
Compared to the internet, of course, it is woefully sparse. It also quickly went out of date as time marched on, such as when the Soviet Union collapsed. Updates would require buying another new set entirely. These are like a time capsule, yet much of the information remains relevant even now.
The old family encyclopedia set
For all you whippersnappers born after the World Wide Web, I grew up in a time when there was no Information Superhighway. Even when my parents first got a computer, it was not internet-capable. Many homes didn't get even dial-up internet access until the late 1990s. I remember booting up Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego from a DOS prompt, and using those encyclopedias to look up flags to narrow down clues. Either our floppy was a copy, or the official booklet went missing. I don't remember which.
When I was studying history, science, and biology, these books were useful reference items in addition to my textbooks. They allowed me to explore world geography, art, and culture to a degree most would consider primitive today, but then, it broadened my horizons to an amazing level. Looking through these books now, they seem almost quaint. The language is clear—I'd estimate it at an 8th-grade reading level—so it was written for accessibility to most readers. I don't remember any difficulty understanding it even in the early grades, but I was a good reader from the start.
Should you get an encyclopedia set in this day and age? Maybe. Websites go offline, or get edited. Censorship could become a real problem. Internet connections and electricity seem to get interrupted right when deadlines loom. Books endure, provided you keep them safe from fires and floods. Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
I remember when we had an encylopaedia set a hundred billion years ago! Though I can't remember if it was World Book or Britannica.
and where I lived it would have been pretty interesting to get it, no travelling salesmen in our part of the world and logistics is a nightmare even now
Also remember trying to figure out the cards at the library and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago and recognising Logo (the programming language where you can get a pixel turtle to draw stuff) in Robot Turtles (a board game I eventually bought for my kids when they were small which teaches programming logic) and getting Windows 3.11 and a computer with a cdrom and the internet xD
My parents gave us their collection of Britannica Great Books (I'm kind of failing at working my way through them) and I think our Encyclolaedia set is long gone, the space on the shelf I remember it being on is now occupieed by photo albums and scrapbooks that my mum has been making/collating (and I kind of value them a lot more).
I've been looking into mesh networks as it seems to somewhat function how the internet in my head universe functions. Might get something or other to try it out at some stage but I don't think it will do that well as I can't imagine there's too many people using it right now. Would help in event of internet outage but not sure how much it would help in event of electrical outage.
I grew up with encyclopedias at home and still keep them in my home today.
I was around a young teen when we had access to dail-up internet but it was for my dad's business use. Only as a young adult/late teen did I start to really explore the internet.
You pose an interesting question... information repositories... without censorship and control by "powers" might be crucial to the survival of humanity...
We never really owned a set of encyclopedias but I do have fond memories of riding my bike to the library.
When I was a librarian, we sometimes had lots of bikes in front of the library. Small town kids still do that
I wanted to have an encyclopedia when I was a child but they were so expensive and we couldn't afford it. I had to go to the library to read them. Now they are available to read online.
I may have the web at my fingertips on a smartphone, but sometimes just a short article in the old books is still enough to answer whatever question I have and get on with the next step without information overload and the distraction of wikiwalking through hyperlinks.
Sometime in the late seventies or early eighties, one of my brothers was arrested in some little hick town in Texas for selling encyclopedias door-to-door without a license. Spent a night in jail until his employer could come and pay a fine.
On one hand, no one wants constant salesman harassment. On the other hand, licenses are just permission to do something otherwise illegal, which means either a crime is legal for a fee, or a non-criminal is being extorted.