Last week the publishers of The Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that the 2010 edition will be the final 32 volumes available in print. They will be fully digital at www.Britannica.com for all future editions.
This was another one of those moments that I had to stop and take in. It hit me that my children will probably never open an encyclopedia at the library. When I was a kid, this was the only option. No one had a home computer let alone access to the internet for research.
I will always remember the smartest boy in my fifth grade class (Maybe not his name, I am horrible with names). One of the reasons he was considered the smartest is that he read the entire encyclopedia for fun. He was full of knowledge about just about everything.
I keep having moments where I wonder about what life was like on a daily basis for my ancestors. How did they do their daily chores? What tasks did they complete at work each day? What did they think about the major stories in the paper? What did they do for fun on a day off? What things became obsolete during their lifetime?
It is important to remember to write down today’s history for your descendants. If we don’t, our kids (grandkids, etc.) will not know about things that effected our childhood like The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Great Tuesday Tip…certainly one that those of us spending so much time in the past with our ancestors, should be thinking about. I Journal…but probably not often enough.