[WikiEN-l] Paper is not paper

Wed Oct 5 02:27:09 UTC 2005

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> It is frequently said that Wikipedia is not paper. Specifically,  
> "Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. This means that there is no  
> practical limit to number of topics we can cover other than  
> verifiability and the other points presented on this page."
>
> But paper is not paper, either. That is, paper encyclopedias are NOT  
> physically limited in size. Some encylopedias (Columbia) have one  
> volume. Some have more. The first edition of the Encyclopedia  
> Britannica had three volumes; the Eleventh Edition had 29. The  
> current Britannica 3 has 32 volumes. 

The 12th edition from 1922 also had 32 volumes.

> (By the way, the Britannica states, rather hyperbolically, that those  
> 32 volumes offer "a boundless range of information.") 

And we run out of bounds from the boundless

> Is the print Britannica limited to 32 volumes by some kind of  
> physical law? Certainly not. In fact, tens of thousands of households  
> that purchase print encyclopedias wisely or foolish subscribe to  
> yearbook programs, often for many years, until they get tired of  
> gluing little cross-reference stickers into their volumes. So the  
> number of books on the shelf actually grows.
>
> But there is a practical limit of about thirty volumes for a print  
> publication, isn't there? No, there isn't. The existence proof is any  
> journal. Journals can and do grow linearly, year after year, into  
> long rows of bound volumes which libraries, if not homes, manage to  
> find room for on their shelves. I am sure that some homes have more  
> than 30 bound-volumes-worth of the National Geographic neatly stacked  
> up in attics or basements.
>
> So what DOES set the limit to what an encyclopedia can include? It is  
> not any physical characteristic, whether measured in quarto leaves or  
> in bytes. 

IIRC there was a time when the Britannica was sold door-to-door in 
communities where reading was not a routine practice. One had to impress 
the neighbours.  So along with the books you would receive a lovely 
wooden bookcase to contain them.  The set of books had to fit in the 
bookcase, with a little room left over for the next few yearbooks that 
could be part of the subsciption.