Encyclopedias Obsolete?
Man, they look so good on the shelf, but is anyone taking them down anymore? We have a set; the family set. My mom was going to get rid of them when she moved to Florida and I couldn't bear to see them yard-saled so I took them. And they do look good on the shelf in the office ... but when I'm writing or researching it's simply faster to use digital reference materials - no matter how much I love the feel of a book in my hands. At one point I thought maybe the kids would use them when they got to school age, but if one can fit a whole set of encyclopedias on one CD now, not to mention the unfathomable resources already on the Web, how much more accessible will reference material be digitally in five or six years? Still, I can't bear the thought of not having a printed dictionary on my desk, and I'm not sure I can part with the printed versions of the encyclopedia, either.