This is the end of an era.  The LAST print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been made and when the stock runs out, there will be no more print editions.

I feel like crying because my grandchildren may never know the joy of paging through a huge encyclopaedia, looking up a topic for school, but browsing as you went along, reading articles on many many interesting topics on your way to the one article you needed for that report.

I feel so sad because the tactile joy of handling a well bound volume is vanishing from the landscape. My children are facile with the computers, and my grandchildren will be even more integrated with technological progress.  I know it has its good side, speed of access to information, interactions with experts in any field of interest, networking with people of similar passions, and the sheer volume of material you can carry with you in a tiny flat screen that weighs less than a paperback book.

I see the advantages of modern technology.  I wear a blue tooth and love talking on the phone and still having my hands free and no wires to tangle. I own a tiny little device that holds MANY CD’s of music and fits in my pocket or on a string around my neck.  My entire CD collection can fit on my laptop computer so my precious CD’s can be stored in a fireproof safe. My kindle weighs hardly anything and holds a small library of books yet fits in my purse.  Oh there is a LOT to recommend the many advances.

Yet I see my child look at a still picture, try to swipe a hand across it to make it move and look up to declare, “stuck!” All because pictures move and can be manipulated so why do some images not do so?  Ah, this is an alien experience to my own.  This child will not remember that when I was that young nobody had yet walked on the moon.  This child will be shocked that when I was that young, most people did not yet have their first color TV.  This child, like an older sibling, will not understand that you can cook even if the microwave is not working.  So many things are “normal” to the little ones today that are still somewhat novel to me because I remember the time when they were not.

So I grieve the progress that takes the printed encyclopaedia away because the fully searchable electronic version is easier to update and faster to search even if the adventure of flipping through the pages and reading as you go is gone.

Hard cover heavy Encyclopaedia Britannica I will miss you!