Well, this move will get a ton of free advertising for Encyclopedia Britannica's on-line version in the form of ads disguised as real news.

/PR director

here to help: Seriously... digital records can be easily wiped out. Printed word, when well preserved, can last for thousands of years.



Just don't break your glasses...

profplump: here to help: Printed word, when well preserved, can last for thousands of years.

Is there some reason you can't well-preserve a digital record for thousands of years?

Thousands of years?? Go out in the shed and find your 5 1/4" floppy copies of your grad school dissertation from merely 20 years ago. I can name a minimum of 3 reasons you won't be able to open them up.

Go in your dad's shed and find his old deck of punchcards. Try reading through those. Go ahead.

OniExpress: profplump: I honestly don't understand why you think it would be easier to keep a set of books in good shape for thousands of years than to have someone apply a "Save As..." operation the collection every 5-10 years to keep the electronic version on current media and in easy-to-access file formats.

profplump: Is there some reason you can't well-preserve a digital record for thousands of years?

Let's put it this way: even without all the complications of needing the right hardware/knowledge to read it, the largest problem with digital media storage is that it isn't. Large, that is. Digital storage is very, very small, and the higher density it is the smalle the "ones and zeros" are. So ever scratch, dent, puncture, etc etc... that removes a portion of the data as a whole (and a lot of times increases the risk of it not being read normally at all).

That and the fact that CDs/DVDs rot over time, so they aren't practical for even a few decades.

A good example I've seen is "The Rosetta Disk", from "The Long Now Foundation".

"The Rosetta Disk fits in the palm of your hand, yet it contains over 13,000 pages of information on over 1,500 human languages. The pages are microscopically etched and then electroformed in solid nickel, a process that raises the text very slightly - about 100 nanometers - off of the surface of the disk. Each page is only 400 microns across - about the width of 5 human hairs - and can be read through a microscope at 650X as clearly as you would from print in a book. Individual pages are visible at a much lower magnification of 100X."

Still, one good scratch and you've lost a lot of pages of information.

Depending on the paper/page-material used, books are the best long-term data storage because they can be easily reproduced as well as easily read. You have better odds of 1 out of 10,000 EB's surviving than you do 1 of 1 "Rosetta Disks".

I'm not going to pretend I can predict the future, and what that means for digital data storage. Much greater men than me have addressed the issue.

However, there is only ONE known archive format. Period. Microfilm. ?What why? Because it can be read with a light source and a magnifier (or without actually), and because it lasts for centuries when properly stored. It takes up very little space too.

I have personally handled microfilm from the late 1800's. Do you know what the books looked like, the ones that the film was made from? For one, you can't touch them because they are sealed in vacuum. For another, there isn't a trace of ink left on a single page. Lastly, the leather binding of the book is so fragile that if you were to open the book, it would fall to dust. The microfilm, 100 years old, is still as readable as it was the day they made it.

What, you may ask, does the US government do with all that microfilm? Well they pay people like me to feed it into scanners and populate their servers with it. Ironically enough.

profplump: I honestly don't understand why you think it would be easier to keep a set of books in good shape for thousands of years than to have someone apply a "Save As..." operation the collection every 5-10 years to keep the electronic version on current media and in easy-to-access file formats.

Steps to keep a set of books in good shape for thousands of years:
1) Have a set of books
2) Keep them somewhere safe
3) Wait thousands of years

Steps to keep a set of digital records in good shape for thousands of years:
1) Keep someone interested in serving as Arbiter of the County Archives for thousands of years
2) Pay them nothing, watch them do nothing
3) Turns out nobody really gives a shiat about your sweet MIDI collection from 20 years ago
4) zzz.....

What about the encyclopedias with the internet uplinks and 27 pages on Gwen Steffani?

profplump: here to help: My point is that future civilizations may not be able to access those backups whereas a printed book doesn't need any real effort or expertise to get at the data

As demonstrated by the ease with which we have been able to fully translate ancient writings. When people stumble across these things they just throw them in their backpack for reading on the toilet.

Oh wait, it turns out that's actually really hard to translate old writings without a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the language and culture of the time, and generally speaking even the very small percentage of the ancient writings survived at all are much too fragile for anything but the most delicate, expert handling.

I honestly don't understand why you think it would be easier to keep a set of books in good shape for thousands of years than to have someone apply a "Save As..." operation the collection every 5-10 years to keep the electronic version on current media and in easy-to-access file formats.

If it wasn't for the Rosetta Stone, we probably still wouldn't understand Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

http://www.a-1hotels.com/eg/history/assets/images/rosetta_stone.JPG

AverageAmericanGuy: Nothing wrong with Funk and Wagnalls, or as it's called now: Encarta.

Fark Encarta. I had to be one of the first kids to use the Encarta CD version (which for me also gave access to the online version). So I was fighting the "you can't cite that' fight with teachers years before the Wiki-Citing nonsense.

/fark my teachers
//fark MLA, too
///but most of all, fark encarta

I'm in the camp that likes to be able to put the entire EB in my pocket on a disc or memory device, but the printed version doesn't require any other device to operate, and as long as the language is the same, won't become obsolete by platform or format.

here to help: My point is that future civilizations may not be able to access those backups whereas a printed book doesn't need any real effort or expertise to get at the data

As demonstrated by the ease with which we have been able to fully translate ancient writings. When people stumble across these things they just throw them in their backpack for reading on the toilet.

Oh wait, it turns out that's actually really hard to translate old writings without a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the language and culture of the time, and generally speaking even the very small percentage of the ancient writings survived at all are much too fragile for anything but the most delicate, expert handling.

I honestly don't understand why you think it would be easier to keep a set of books in good shape for thousands of years than to have someone apply a "Save As..." operation the collection every 5-10 years to keep the electronic version on current media and in easy-to-access file formats.

AverageAmericanGuy: Marshall Willenholly: Every kid in school whose parents were rich enough had Encyclopedia Britannica. My mom had an old set of Funk & Wagnalls that I was embarrased to use. We had to make those little 3x5 notecards showing the source of the material we used in our reports, and I always hated having to reference the F&W.

Nothing wrong with Funk and Wagnalls, or as it's called now: Encarta.
~
According to my mail, Encarta [Microsoft] begrudgingly used F&W coz none of their preferred choices would let them. I believe F&W is no longer Encarta.

ps: Came here for "look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls." Leaving happy. Here's a funny F&W scene from Buck Rogers, 1970s TV (new window, 0:31, SFW).

FTA: "We're going to have a cake in the shape of a print set to celebrate," Cauz says, laughing. "Is that morbid?""



Cake?

/Sets the encyclopedia on fire

here to help: Cripes!!! At least keep printing them for libraries and the like.

I'm sure some wealthy cocks would toss into that idea if it isn't profitable for the company.

Are they the last encyclopedia printer?

No? What's the big deal?

Marshall Willenholly: Every kid in school whose parents were rich enough had Encyclopedia Britannica. My mom had an old set of Funk & Wagnalls that I was embarrased to use. We had to make those little 3x5 notecards showing the source of the material we used in our reports, and I always hated having to reference the F&W.

Nothing wrong with Funk and Wagnalls, or as it's called now: Encarta.

Every kid in school whose parents were rich enough had Encyclopedia Britannica. My mom had an old set of Funk & Wagnalls that I was embarrased to use. We had to make those little 3x5 notecards showing the source of the material we used in our reports, and I always hated having to reference the F&W.

SpikeStrip: got a set of world book. anything up to and including 1966 you'd ever want to know.

I hear this.
I loved reading the encyclopedia back in 1979, but face it, Wikipedia and the internet at large is by far more useful and informative. If I had this source of knowledge as a kid, I would be learning things I didn't learn until I was in college.

SpikeStrip: got a set of world book. anything up to and including 1966 you'd ever want to know.

HAHAHA When I was an elementary school lad in the early 90s, I pretty much read or looked at every page of a complete set of early 1960's World Book my grandma had bought for my teenage dad new. In Jr High, turns out my knowledge of African countries was pretty damn inaccurate.

DAR: dear doomsday preppers, survivalists, antiquers, and end of the world types. Now is the time to pick up that really nice set of Encyclopedia Britannica that will still work after the great EMP event of 2012 which will take out "every" server, hard drive, DAT tape, and off site overseas storage backups of your data......

/really would like a complete copy like my sister had years ago that included cellophane layovers of the human anatomy, page by page which till this day still creeps me out.....k/dar

Oh, this was my pride and joy 25 years ago. It was the first thing I bought on credit. I liked just browsing through them, and, of course, looking at the naughty bits on the anatomy pages. I paid almost 2K for these books over time. I ended up leaving them to rot after a divorce and nowhere to put them. Honestly, though, google and other sources have replaced it until now, but it is getting to the point where I would happily pay 2 bucks a month to skip the crap that is out there now.

Let me get this straight -- they were still printing them? You've gotta be shiatting me.

Candygram4Mongo: FirstNationalBastard: Candygram4Mongo: brap: This makes me sad. I made a point of trying to read our EBs from A to Z under the misguided notion that if I did I would know absolutely EVERYTHING.

Okay, tell me all about Albuquerque.

It's a magical, far away place where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer and the towels are oh so fluffy. Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long and anyone on the street will glady shave your back for a nickel!


Okay. Just making sure.

It's the quality writing that always makes EB stand above the others...

Actually, it's the binding that really sets EB apart.

Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.