Dubai: If you plan on being stranded for the winter in the Antarctic sometime soon, you better change your plan now: There's no more Encyclopaedia Britannica to keep you warm.
The 21-volume tome was burnt one page at a time by members of the Shackleton Expedition in 1908-09 to keep them warm from bitter sub-zero temperatures. But now, the Encyclopaedia Britannica will cease printing, becoming a purely online edition only.
The decision ends a publishing tradition going back to 1768 when the reference work was first produced in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since then, the work has grown to 32 volumes, costs $1,400 (Dh5,141) for a complete set, and can be shipped anywhere around the world.
The American University in Dubai has a complete set, though a librarian there yesterday said it's rarely consulted when contacted by Gulf News. Most students now just check out Wikipedia for facts and background.
Since 1974, Encyclopaedia Britannica has been flirting with digital editions — that year's edition was uploaded onto a computerised publishing system to make revisions easier. By 1981, the company was producing its editions in multimedia format on CD-ROMs.
"The print edition became more difficult to maintain and wasn't the best physical element to deliver the quality of our database and the quality of our content," Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., told reporters on Wednesday in New York.
"Encyclopaedia Britannica was one of the first companies to really feel the full impact of technology, maybe 20 years ago, and we have been adapting to it, though it is very difficult at times," he said.
Scholarly reputation
But with its scholarly reputation, the work had not been affected by the popularity of Wikipedia, Cauz added. Instead of costing $1,400 for the full 32 books, an online subscription costs $70 per year and the company has developed a set of pay apps for mobile devices. Those subscriptions costs up to $4.99 monthly. Back in 1990, Encyclopaedia Britannica sold 120,000 sets. By 1996, 40,000 sets were sold.
There are currently some 4,000 sets of the 2012 edition remaining. Once those are sold, it's the final chapter for the reference works which often peddled by door-to-salesmen who could only carry limited sample copies of the complete works.
"A printed encyclopedia is obsolete the minute that you print it," Cauz said.
"Whereas our online edition is updated continuously."