La fin de l’Encyclopaedia Britannica papier

Gary Marchionini, the dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the fading of print encyclopedias was an inexorable trend that will continue.

There’s more comprehensive material available on the Web, Mr. Marchionini said. The thing that you get from an encyclopedia is one of the best scholars in the world writing a description of that phenomenon or that object, but you’re still getting just one point of view. Anything worth discussing in life is worth getting more than one point of view.

 » After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses, NYT – Media Decoders. Intéressant de relever que l’attrait du web ne tient pas qu’à des questions pratiques ou de coût, mais aussi parce qu’il accompagne mieux la fluidité des définitions et la fin d’un certain absolu sémantique. Fondamentalement, c’est probablement ça que l’internet aura le plus modifié dans nos cultures.