The Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopedia Britannica, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia under production, has tied up with Indian publisher Katha to take Indian stories to children across India and worldwide. Britannica will convert titles owned by Katha into eBooks, and distribute them worldwide as part of its eBook program under the overall eLibrary initiative.

When Encyclopaedia Britannica announced last month that it was discontinuing its print editions after 244 years, company executives noted that there were 4,000 sets of the final 32-volume 2010 edition left in a warehouse, the remnants of an old tradition.

Less than three weeks later, the bulk of them are gone.

For 244 years, the thick volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica have stood on the shelves of homes, libraries, and businesses everywhere, a source of enlightenment as well as comfort to their owners and users around the world.

They’ve always been there. Year after year. Since 1768. Every. Single. Day.

But not forever.

Today we’ve announced that we will discontinue the 32-volume printed edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica when our current inventory is gone.

Britannica Digital Learning nonfiction e-book titles will now be available through a new digital portal, Ebooks.eb.com.

It used to be that an encyclopedia salesman knocked on your door in hopes of selling you the latest 12-volume series of books brimming with factual information about everything from binary cell division to Benjamin Franklin. And your only option for finding the definition of onomatopoeia used to be to lug the dictionary off the shelf and thumb through its pages. Those days are, to some extent, history. As a result, reference publishers face significant challenges—reflected in a significant drop in new titles released in 2005—as they strive to adapt to new trends in the market. Paul Kobasa, editor in chief for World