Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Encyclopedia Britannica
Take a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica article most closely related to your AB topic. Examine both the online version and the print volumes when you can. Is the textual content the same? What about images? Other content? Which version, print or electronic, seems superior to you? Whether you have researched your topic in Encyclopedia Britannica or not, try answering this question: Should the library be spending money (your tuition dollars) on both the printed and electronic Encyclopedia Britannica?
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7 comments:
I looked at the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica and checked out the article most closely related to my topic. for a third comparison, I also searched my topic on wikipedia. I found that Encyclopedia Britannica online had an article related to my topic which was essentially a definition with a very brief history. It did not discuss my topic in depth at all which I found to be less than helpful. This took little to no time in searching as I simply used the keyword search. However,I was not able to access it from my house and using it required me to travel to the campus library.
I spent roughly 20 minutes trying to find something related to my topic in the textual version of Encyclopedia Britannica and did not succeed. I decided that trying more would be even more of a waste of time and gave up. As previously noted, this method seemed much more time consuming and yielded much harder to find results. It also required me to travel to the campus library which was time consuming as well.
After opening the comment box for this discussion, I decided to check out what wikipedia had on my subject and did a search here at my house. In a matter of seconds, I had a very extensive history on my specific subject along with many other related subjects with countless links to even more related material. I found that to be an incredibly helpful starting off point for my annotated bibliography.
I think that if one were to be cut out, the library should not spend money on the printed Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm sure this does not cost as much as the electronic version; However the electronic version allows far more users to use the resource at one time. The electronic version is also incredibly more easy to use with a simple keyword search providing specific information sought.
For the writing of research papers or for presentations and classroom teaching I use many media forms. I was surprised however when I researched my AB topic for the purpose of this discussion blog. Granted I only searched using a portion of my main title heading but . . . , I found as much as 5x's more information on the EB print version as I did the online version. Assessibility to external links was of course much easier within the online article but the main body of the article was a great deal less useful and was also missing illustrations.
Once again for reasons previously stated in past blogs, I will always have a fondness for the printed matter. I will however, and do extensively, use the digital formats whether online or at the library. So for my money, at least at this time, I want access to both.
It is a good idea for the library to purchase both the online as well as printed versions of Encyclopedia Britannica because they can be used differently for different types of research. The printed versions often offer more information than the online versions and it is also very helpful to actually be able to have the real text compared to reading off of a computer screen. I looked at both versions and found that I was able to find more information using the printed version, however, it was much easier to search using the online database. For a large library such as MSUs it is important to offer different ways to research for different kind of people. The internet can often confuse some people and it could cause them not to be able to get the same amount of research done compared to sitting down and opening a book.
Upon review of both sources of information (online vs. hard copy) I found them to be different. By different I mean the content varied enough to warrant the use of the word different, but I got the same information out of both sources. Although upon searching both key words I found more information initially in the print article, I gathered more information online. I think this is due to the fact that almost everything is linked to other sources of information in the online version. This allows them to compensate for maybe not as long of a "definition" of the key word as found in the print article because the user can end up browsing more relevant information very quickly while online! I believe that the electronic version seems superior due to the fact that every article I view is cross linked to relevant information that helps support the initial topic that I started researching. At this point, the library needs to be spending money on both because there are obviously many people who still use the printed version, but as the next few generations become more computer literate, it will be much easier for them to navigate and research the same resource electronically. Not only will future generations become more adept at searching online references, these can be updated much easier and the cost will be much less than printing and shipping entire new volumes of reference material.
Mike Pasque
I went through both Encylopaedia Britannica and the search engines in internet. I found a lot of differencs in the information provided by them. Encycolpaedia Britannica gave me information about my AB topic briefly while the search engine for eg. google gave a lots of related and non related websites.i searched for the exact information through the millions of websites but was in vain. i got only little information about my topic from internet.
in my opinion, the new versions of printed and electronic encyclopaedia has more up to date information and is more refined so i think the library should spend on them.
I researched different search engines around the internet and the Encyclopedia Britannica. I found that there was a lot of different information in both sources. Encyclopedia Britannica did not give me that much information on my topic. But the search engines gave me good results
Andrew Koski
There was a lot of interesting information both online and in the physical Encyclopedia itself. I think it is a good idea to have both printed and electronic because you have the option to use either. Depending on where you are at the time one may be of more value to you than the other.
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