Encyclopedias were all the rage when I was in grade school. My parents thought that it was necessary to purchase one set of encyclopedias to enhance my learning. They purchased the set using their hard earned money. The encyclopedias helped me with my research for a couple of years. But when the Internet boomed, I hardly read them ever since. We still have the encyclopedias though. It's a symbol of the love and support that my parents have for me. Do you still have encyclopedias at your house?
No I don't have a set now. Not even the cd version. Essentially the internet is easier and more current. I got rid of a set about five years ago, when I moved. They looked good but space reasons made it necessary. And as I said, I seem to do research on the internet now rather than a set of books that are literally years out of date. Ryder13
My parents have a full set of the Encyclopedia Britanica and I have my grandmother's set of World book. I love what they represent and intend to keep my set forever, but I also collect antique books so maybe I am different. Encyclopedias are the greatest collection of information pre-interenet and I think it is a bit of history worth preserving!
I still have them along with the huge old fashioned huge dictionaries. I honestly wanted to sell them to a collector or to someone who would just appreciate them more but my parents were just against it. I guess these old styled encyclopedias and dictionaries will be an ancient antique in many more generations of my family.
We got rid of ours a few years back. I used them every once in a while when I was in grade school. Like you, once the internet became popular it was much easier for me to look up all I needed to find using my computer. Those bulky books took up our entire closet. It was ridiculous how much space was cleared out once we got rid of them.
I have one silly question, how did you guys get rid of your encyclopedias? Did you give them away? Did you sell them? Did you burn them? Maybe I'll dispose of our encyclopedia set too in the near future. Does anybody still want to buy these books?
I remember when we were in elementary school, getting an updated set of Encyclopedias was so exciting. THe last set we bought was in 1994. My mom is just getting ready to sell her house, so we just got rid of those the other day. We put our in the recycle bin, the company said they should be recyclable.
Well we still have a set of those bulky encyclopedia in our old house. I am talking about the house of my mom and dad. They bough it for me and my brother when we were still in grade school. However I barely read them now because I have my own place to stay now and besides, you can get anything that you would want to know in the internet these days.
Yes, because a reliance on the Internet is what is causing so many young people to become so "forgetful" these days. No one feels the need to retain information because they can search Google or Bing or ask someone something or... So I keep my encyclopedias as a reminder to actual assimilate the data I'm exposed to.
The ones that my mom and dad bought us when we were kids are still at their house and my mom never gets rid of anything so I'm sure they will always be there. I'd say that those encyclopedias are over 40 years old. They are in still in my old bedroom and when I am there visiting and see them, it brings a smile to my face, just thinking of old times. I've seen some of the old encyclopedias listed on ebay, but I'm not sure if they sell. It probably depends on the age, condition and the kind they are. A drawback to selling them online though is that they are so heavy, it would be expensive to ship them. Nowadays, most people have the Internet, so the old encyclopedias have become obsolete.
I grew up with a set of World Book Encyclopedia. I loved them. My mom is a hoarder, but I don't think she still has them. Having our own set of Encyclopedias was awesome, but no really necessary today. That's too bad.
Too many, my living room is filled with only informative books like that and i think that there is not one single fiction book in there. Will have to say my thanks for my parents for that!
That is a very good point! Use it or lose it. My Mom still has the two sets that I grew up on. I don't have a set, but I did recently purchase a 1976 Webster Dictionary (2 large, hardcover books) on ebay. I like having the real thing.
Yes, we still have them at our house, but it's just at the garage collecting dust. Honestly, we don't know what to do with it. If I could sell it for a good amount of money, I'd sell it right now for sure. But it really wouldn't bring in a significant amount, and it's still too valuable to just throw away, in my opinion, since it is history. I'll just hang on to it and just hope that it turns into an antique item someday.
Ha! Yes, we had the Merit Student's Encyclopedia near at hand when we were growing up. I don't remember at what point it got moved into storage, but I think we ended up giving it away to a guy who was collecting textbooks to send to his native country. I hope they aren't too out of date.
Unfortunately since wikipedia came into my life i have no real use for encyclopedias. Wikipedia shows you how much the old school encyclopedias really lacked in information. I can literally search for any and everythin and there is bound to be something on it on wikipedia and if not google is an alternative which may bring some decent information.
I wish. My grandfather recently passed away and I had a chance to take the encyclopedias I grew up scouring on rainy days. I missed them and would love to have them, but I don't have a place for them. I didn't at the time anyway and now I'm too far away to just pick them up (my uncle has them). So hopefully one day.
I bought encyclopedias for my daughter when she was little, but then we got into the habit of looking up everything on the internet, so I donated them to Goodwill. I was relieved to free up that space. I noticed that they still make encyclopedias on DVD Rom, but I wouldn't want to own one when I can just Google things.
Its funny you should mention Wikipedia because I have to agree with you it is a good online source. I know it has some bad reputation because anyone can update something for the most part. But so far i have found most of its information to be accurate. Anyway the reason I found this funny is I have often wondered if kids of this generation would actually know what a set of encyclopedia's are. For them an encyclopedia is a CD-Rom that goes into a computer, or of course Wikipedia for online research purposes. So, I guess any kid who wanted to know what a set of encyclopedia's are, a good answer would be the ancestor of Wikipedia. As for my home we use to have two sets while I was growing up. But both of them were gotten rid of the older we got and of course when the Internet came into existence. There was no reason to hang onto them any longer.
I got rid of all of them... I have the Internet I don't need to store something physically, it is all in my computer
