My parents, education-forward that they were, bought not just one set of encyclopedias... they bought us two. They were different brands, but years apart, so I'm guessing they wanted to have books with the most current information while we were in school. No idea how my parents were able to afford such an extravagance... probably a monthly payment plan or some kind... but I was very glad to have them. Not just for the sheer convenience of having such a massive resource for doing school work at home (no trip to the library for me!), but also for entertainment.

I remember pulling volumes off the shelf and just reading them. Sometimes randomly flipping pages to learn something new. But most times starting on page one then working my way through it. I had an encyclopedia on my nightstand a lot as a kid.

Then came CD-ROMs. A media just begging for an encyclopedia set.

The big one being Microsoft Encarta, which I actually owned because it came with some bundle I got. But since I was on a Mac, I never used it. I had one of the alternatives, The World Book Encyclopedia. Which was handy, sure, but it was so slow and such a hassle that I didn't use it much. It was so much easier to grab a book off the shelf.

Except you couldn't, because the minute CD-ROM versions came out, the print versions were discontinued. Which I get because printing that many full-color pages were not cheap.

Which brings us to an interesting aside... apparently The World Book Encyclopedia is the only American encyclopedia still available in print. Sure it costs $1,175.00, but dang is it beautifully-designed...

World Book's owner Berkshire Hathaway's CEO Warren Buffett has committed to keeping the encyclopedias in print so long as a demand for them exists, which is darn cool.

But anyway...

The reason I fell down this encyclopedia rabbit hole is because I was wondering what happens when kids no longer know what an encyclopedia actually is. They'll likely be all Oh... you mean Wikipedia?" or something. And THAT got me wondering what happens to my childhood literary hero, Encyclopedia Brown? Perhaps the publisher will change his name to Wikipedia Brown? Or do they revert to using his real name... Leroy Brown.

They might as well, because it's not like kids now-a-days have ever heard of the Jim Croce song Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.