Asked how the family encyclopedia is being used, one California high school senior replied, "Sometimes my mom uses it as a coaster" -- a typical from teenagers in the age of the Internet, as well as a sign that the age of the multi-volume encyclopedia is receding into history. Encyclopedia sets were once a status symbol of upper-class educated households, and in the 1980s installment plans were created to make $1,400 reference sets affordable for poorer families. But encyclopedia companies Colliers and Funk & Wagnalls are now long gone from the business, and the companies that survived the shakeout (Britannica, World Book and Grolier) have business plans now focused on the Web. Still, teachers and librarians worry that young students can easily get overwhelmed by the vast amount of information on the Internet. One librarian makes her students complete book-based research before going to the Web, and says: "Half of them want to jump on the computer and are not even sure what they want to look up." Maybe so, but one California mother points out: "The kids are so computer literate that it would seem almost foreign to them to use a book."
posted by Marcus Zillman |
4:20 AM
