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New Biographies - including US President Barack Obama, top-ranked professional tennis player and winner of a record 15 Grand Slam singles titles Roger Federer, and writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Doris Lessing. Stay current with the 2010 revised edition, updated with new articles, photographs and thousands of additions to existing topics: - World News - such as the historic Presidential election in the United States, other major political elections across the globe and the continued violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, the new 32-volume revision builds on this expertise with an incredible wealth of knowledge that's easily accessible yet comprehensive - making it the first choice reference work for thousands of schools, universities, libraries and family homes. First published in 1768, Britannica continues to be the world's most renowned encyclopedia. Written by more than 4,300 expert contributors, you can be confident that everything you learn from Encyclopadia Britannica is clear, current and correct. Although some may bemoan the loss of the print version, Britannica’s very survival is an accomplishment following a digital revolution that spelled the end for more than a few reference publishers.Vast, Detailed, Correct. Encyclopaedia Britannica hopes to drive more traffic to its site, making the full database now accessible for a one-week free trial. The challenge is of distribution and how to please an algorithm that tries to identify quality, but doesn’t really quite get it right all the time.”Ībout 30 percent of Britannica’s content is available for free through search engines. Jorge Cauz said, “We know we have a challenge there. visits, compared with about 455,000 for, during a recent week, a trend driven as much by search engine algorithms as economics. Wikipedia received more than 86 million U.S. Cauz says that focusing on its digital products will help Britannica compete against Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia website built and maintained by users, which went online in 2001 and dominates the digital-reference space. There are about 4,000 sets left, selling for $1,395 each on the Britannica website, after which, the iconic publication will be history.įrom Encyclopaedia Britannica to Ībout 500,000 subscribers pay $70 per year for full online access to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The final print version is the 32-volume 2010 edition, which weighs 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project. With accepting the realities of digital age and of competition from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools. Buying a set was often a financial stretch, and many families had to pay for it in monthly installments. Having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspiring middle class, in the 1950s. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.” Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. said, “It’s a rite of passage in this new era. Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. And of late, the rise of high-speed Internet and Wikipedia shifted reference libraries from bookshelves to online magazines and reference websites, with only a few thousand copies of the printed version trickling out each year to libraries, schools and handful homeowners. Within a few years, sales of Encyclopaedia Britannica began to tumble, as consumers opted for home computers bundled with CD-ROM encyclopedias over the $1,500 leather-bound sets. Encyclopaedia Britannica executives say that the coolly authoritative, gold-lettered reference books that were marketed door-to-door for generations, employed thousands of employees and sold more than 100,000 sets as recently as 1990, its best year ever, when it generated $650 million in revenue.Įncyclopaedia Britannica’s Tumbling Sales You can still look it up to its digital version online. It will stop being available when the current stock runs out, the company said. There have been more than 7 million sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica printed and sold over the years, an essential home reference library lining bookshelves. The first ever Encyclopaedia Britannica has been in print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768. said that it will stop publishing print editions of its flagship encyclopedia for the first time ever since the sets were originally published in 1768, more than 200 years ago.Įncyclopaedia Britannica’s 244 Years of Existence After about 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, is departing from print.