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Comment by MerelyMortal | Hacker News Reader

I want an encyclopedia set, and there is the World Book Encyclopedia that still updates and publishes a physical book set every year, the question then for myself is, which year should I get? Isn't one always tempted to wait for the following year's?

https://www.worldbook.com

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The which year is a big question. I found a complete set from the early 1950s at Half Price Books in the books by the yard section. The entry for Christmas in this set calls it a pagan ritual. More recent editions no longer refer to it that way. The editorializing would be an interesting bit of research not only between release years, but between publishers as well. Did one start a trend the others followed? Was it always the same "leader"? I bet there's some library science folks that already know these answers.

> The entry for Christmas in this set calls it a pagan ritual. More recent editions no longer refer to it that way.

Ha! That's fascinating. And true of course.

And OCR and diff it, possibly?

> Isn't one always tempted to wait for the following year's?

It's worth noting that articles are already (at least) a year out of date when you buy it, because that elegantly-bound version has gone through a long editorial and production process. A potential solution to that problem is to complement the paper version with World Book Online ($250/year).

If it's in a print encyclopedia one would think the the ideas presented would be resilient enough to survive a year.

Oh, man! What a temptation. I grew up in a house that my father filled with books, including the World Book Encyclopedia which I liked but the book resource I treasured the most was a multi-volume OED set he had bought used.

OED = Oxford English Dictionary. I had to look that up, FYI for anyone else.

I definitely want a nice large dictionary. I have my eyes set on my parent's copy that I'll get one day, but multi-volume? That's interesting...

As a kid I used to go see Britannica Encyclopedia volumes. Just see, turn some pages, and then leave.

You want the 11th edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica.

Why that one in particular?

It was their first "complete" edition, where all volumes were released at once. (Previously, volumes were released as they were finished.) It was also when they transitioned to an American publication. Unlike Wikipedia which has "editors" that throw things together and reference "sources," Encyclopædia Britannica used real "experts." (Niels Bohr (atom), Marie Curie (part of the radium article), Albert Einstein (space-time), Sigmund Freud (Freudian School of Psychoanalysis)

It's now in the public domain and the "'Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia' is the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, renamed to address Britannica's trademark concerns." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica_E...)

ok, I gotta admit the binding art for this year is badass

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