I imagine that most of us - at least those of us above a certain age - grew up with the habit of consulting printed encyclopedias, and that we've probably gradually more-or-less left them behind in favor of Wikipedia, Google, and online sources. I'd be interested to know what other people's experience is. It doesn't often occur to me to get up and go into the other room and consult the encyclopedia.
We all know that Wikipedia has limitations, but it's generally "good enough". It's so easy to just check something on Wikipedia. I do still have my EB - but it's in another room of the house.
In recent years, for me - probably like most people - Wikipedia and Google has replaced EB as my first reference. Was it the same in the German-speaking world - did the "encyclopedia" once occupy a significant place in an educated person's intellectual Bildung? And in fact, the EB used to have a representational value beyond its use as a reference source: in many houses it signified something it represented a tangible sign for its owners and their neighbors that the owners had intellectual aspirations, that they were making an effort to get ahead, that they saw themselves as educated.
25 volumes, heavy, expensive, not online - but written by scholars and experts, scholarly, dependable. Whenever I wanted to know something about anything, I would start first with EB. I sometimes think back to the time when the Encyclopedia Britannica was my principal reference source.
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