Yikes! Well, we better hang on to my parents’ set for another few decades, then. There are probably a lot of old encyclopedias and dictionaries headed out to landfills these days, which is sort of sad.

I agree with the value of browsing. It’s one of the things I miss about “real” bookstores and libraries. On several occassions I’ve found very cool things that were just down the shelf from what I was officially looking forward. The “Recommended if you like…” stuff at Amazon provides a similar function (and perhaps more focussed), but it is a qualitatively different experience.

My folks bought us a set of encylopedias when I was growing up. 1977 I think. I recently took the giant box full of the entrie set (nearly destroying my back) out of my folks basement and into Half Price Books. The guys at the counter was very plesant. He gave me a dollar for my efforts. Those books are just going to get re-pulped. If they had been another 30 years older, they might have been interesting. As it was, they were just out of date.

I have to say that there is a positive world to be said for spine-bound knowledge. There is a method of exploration in books (the dictonary for example) that is very difficult to acheive electronically.