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Are encyclopedias still useful?
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I have just been offered a full 1950’s set of Collier encyclopedias. My first reaction was to turn them down because that just isn’t how I get information anymore. But then I started wondering if I might be missing some good reason to keep them. If you have any thoughts, I’d like to hear.
Thanks!
I’m not sure I would keep one from the ’50’s…. maybe one from the ’80’s or ’90’s (or later of course)….
The only thing I could think of for ones that old are to cut pictures out of…..
Now if you get an offer of a set of Childcraft (from Worldbook) – I’d grab those in a heartbeat no matter what the age!!! We own a set from the 70’s and a set from the ’80’s (they changed a fair bit in between) and they are delightful.
I use a set to cut out entries for our composer and artist studies, things that have not changed. I am not sure how old ours are, but they are certainly too old for modern studies. I also used them to cut out pictures of land and river definitions during a geography quick study we were doing. I have space for them in our storage area otherwise I would have pitched them. They obviously don’t contain any information you can’t find easily on the internet. I would love to know if anyone has any more creative ideas for using them though.
I have to say I would take them. We have the World Book from the 70’s (and the wonderful Childcraft set). I haven’t really seen any printed encyclopedia form later than that, but I have the World Book for the computer that’s just a year old. I hate it. Really, it has so much less information than my old printed set.
I know they aren’t living books, but at least they have long articles about real things. I imagine a set from the 50’s would be even more interesting. I mean really, sometimes I just want a little info, even though I love love love living books. Sometimes the kids look through them just to get ideas of things they would like to study more about.
My husband loves to get one out and just read something to us about something and talk about it for a while. It’s fun; I wouldn’t want to be without a set.
We have a set from the 50’s that my Grandma gave us and we LOVE it! I have a couple different versions on my computer from 2000 and while the color pics are nice, I much prefer the old version.
Sometimes I will look up something and then find myself surrounded by several of them as I’ve followed the “see this title for more info” section. Now my 13 yr old daughter is starting to do the same thing. She has learned a lot in the last couple of months from the encyclopedias.
You know, as a child I used to have an encyclopedia (we always had one!) and I loved them, and would sit and read them….. but when we were given a set a couple of years ago, it sat unused. We didn’t have a lot of space, so we got rid of them. I’d love a current set (from about year 2000+ so that the stuff on Canada is accurate…) but I’m unlikely to find a set that current for free!
I would probably keep them. A lot of that stuff doesn’t have to change over the years. Even if I only used it to find composer/inventor/artist/writer biographies and pictures, I would consider that worth the space =) They will contain info on each state in the US and other countries (geography) and other things. There is no reason you couldn’t supplement with the more current computer stats if you even needed to.
I also remember sitting around when I was younger and reading about ants and bees. My brother used to get bored so he would read those. He grew up to become a National Merit Scholar and had a full-ride scholarship to several universities. He is now a chemical PHd and studying breast cancer treatments and cures. So…wonder where I went wrong??? LOL
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