Grolier has stopped printing Americana & New Book of Knowledge etc, and is now publishing only the online version. I assume World Book and Britannica are continuing the print version along with the online version – at least for awhile.
If the “traditional” publishers want to compete with Wikipedia – are they planning to broaden their coverage? For instance, our 9th graders do research on young adult authors every year. MANY of those authors have not reached the level of “fame” etc. to merit inclusion in World Book, Americana et al. Wikipedia is often the only place I can send kids to do the broad, general, beginning research that I would like them all to start with before getting into author reference sets, whole biographies etc.
So – here are my questions….
1. Do the traditional encyclopedias plan to put online ONLY what they can feasibly publish in a print encyclopedia?
OR
2. Are they going to take advantage of the limitless storage of the web to broaden both the scope and depth of their coverage?
Believe me – I COMPLETELY understand the drawbacks of Wikipedia. However, as cautious as I am about Wikipedia, I am questioning the value of continuing our subscriptions to the traditional encyclopedias, if I don’t see a significant change in their business plans.
Thoughts?
Jacquie, Even though I have already sent you this reply privately after reading your post on lm_net, I wanted to post my comment here on your blog. Again, thanks for bringing this up.
Nancy
I know that I was actually embarrassed this past school year. I had convinced my principal to purchase World Book Online, had done some lessons on the inaccuracies of Wikipedia, and convinced my kids to use World Book first. Then a teacher sent some children to the library to find some information on some obscure inventors. You can guess the rest of the story. Nothing on WB; we wound up using Wikipedia. And this is
elementary school.
You are completely correct. I’m not sure if I can recommend we renew our subscription next year. I guess I should let WB know about this!
I have sent Grolier and World Book a link to this blog post. It will be interesting to see if they reply.