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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2423 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 31, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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We want to register for an encyclopedia. Which encyclopedias do the esteemed autists of the Motte recommend?

What are your goals? Do you want a physical repository of information as insurance against AI sloppification or some kind of catastrophe? Do you want an old-fashioned collector's item with beautiful binding and illustrations to put in your home library? Do you want something to assist with your children's education? Do you want a snapshot of what the world looked like at a particular point in time? You're obviously looking for something more than just general reference information, which can be obtained much more efficiently online.

For most applications, I'd probably recommend a full edition of Britannica from 20 or so years ago: recent enough that most of the information is still good, but old enough to be before the collapse of traditional publishing and all the corner cutting that led to. The older the edition, the higher quality the physical books, illustrations, etc. are likely to be. If you want something current, the World Book is (I think) the only general reference encyclopedia still publishing a print edition every year, so you really don't have many options unless you're interested in something like The Book, which you probably saw youtube or instagram ads for last year, but that's more of a coffee table book than a true encyclopedia.

I definitely don't want current - goal is a reference book for kids so they don't have to go in the Internet to learn everything. I'm fine with it being a bit outdated. The Brittanica seems like a good choice yeah.

We plan to limit our kid's internet time so encylopedias are important!

In that case, you can find some great deals at estate sales. Nobody wants to lug around 120 pounds worth of outdated reference material, and local libraries won't take them, so you can get entire like-new collections for a fraction of what you'd pay online. Probably for free if you bring your kid.

I have yet to see a set in my cruises of estate sales. Clearly, that means they’re in high demand.

Though if he brings his kid, there’s an elevated risk of acquiring kitcsh.

Craigslist and facebook marketplace have kind of ruined the fun of thrifting, garage sales, etc, it's true. Someone has usually already gone through and grabbed all the good stuff for resale before you even get there.

And even if it's not the one that answers your question, there's apparently one edition of the Britannica that's considered peak. Does anyone remember which it is?

You're probably thinking of the 11th edition, which is notable for being a high point of scholarship, but also because, having come out in 1911, it was the last edition[1] to enter the American public domain before the Mickey Mouse Protection Act froze copyright for 20 years. As a result, it left a deep impact in popular culture, such as forming the initial basis of many Wikipedia articles and being featured in Eric Flint's 1632 series[2].

When in doubt--"look it up" in the Encyclopedia Britannica; the only book, except the Bible, which has followed the Anglo-Saxon around the world.

[1] Well, kind of. The 12th edition came out in 1922, just in time to avoid getting caught in the freeze. However, it consisted of three volumes supplementing the 11th (primarily with articles about World War I), rather than a whole new edition.

[2] From 1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber:

In retrospect, Eddie knew he was lucky that he hadn't fallen afoul of the king's temper much sooner. He'd known that Christian IV had a complete edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in his possession, since the king bragged about it constantly. But Eddie had assumed that since the king of Denmark had spent a small fortune to get his hands on a copy of the entire Britannica, he'd had enough sense to get the great 1911 edition, which was by far the most useful one for down-timers.

What an idiot he'd been! With Christian's obsession with gadgetry and all things modern, Eddie should have realized the Danish king would have insisted on the most recent edition in Grantville. That was the 1982 edition, if he remembered correctly.

Which, of course—once someone checked—had plenty of references to the various individuals that Eddie had mentioned in his sundry lies to the king. At the time, especially with his brain pickled in alcohol half the time since the king insisted he carouse with him, Eddie had thought he'd been very clever.

Ah, yes, Your Majesty, we have superb armaments technicians. The best are probably Walt Disney, Harpo Marx, and Clint Eastwood.

Oh, and by far the best gunsmith is Elvis Presley.

And from 1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce:

Encyclopedias, Duke Albrecht thought, the wondrous encyclopedias.

If the future had learned nothing else from the Jesuits, he mused wryly, it had learned the Art of Extraction that they taught so painstakingly to their students—how to go through a nearly unmanageable body of material, reduce it to its essence, and take notes with marginal indices that enabled one to find the needed reference again without immense waste of time. The books of the up-timers were all very well, but Father Contzen had complained to him more than once that finding something in them was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Which book might have it, if, indeed, any book had it at all? But the encyclopedias, all of them: alphabetically arranged, with cross references at the end of one article indicating where the researcher could find related material in the compendium. Not just the great one, the 1911 Britannica, which they guarded so carefully, but all of them—the later Britannica editions, the World Book and Americana, Columbia, and Funk and Wagnalls, old and new, large and small. Some more useful than others, but each one a treasure trove.

Duke Albrecht had been told that Father Kircher devoted all the time that he could spare to encyclopedias. But more, there were a half dozen other young Jesuits, five of them from the English College and thus able to handle the language more effectively, whom the order was subsidizing to spend their days sitting in Grantville's libraries. Once they translated their valuable discoveries into Latin, of course, the information was available to every man of learning in Europe.

I believe you're thinking of the 11th edition from 1911, the last edition produced before World War I. However I've also heard that the 14th edition from 1929 is held in esteem as the true peak of the old ways before the Depression and WWII changed everything again.

I know that 14th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is considered peak, but it's not quite an encyclopedia (but should still be part of every household!)

And? Idk I would love and answer here.

I can't find any good community things about this. Could be the 13th? That's got things like Houdini writing about "Conjuring", Marconi writing about wireless telegraphy, etc:

The contributors included Niels Bohr (“Atom”), Marie and Irène Curie (“Radium”), Albert Einstein (“Space-Time”), Henry Ford (“Mass Production”), Sigmund Freud (“Psycho-analysis”), George Bernard Shaw (“Socialism: Principles and Outlook”), and Leon Trotsky (“Lenin”).

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-English-language-reference-work/Thirteenth-edition

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