by HOWARD YUNE, Napa Valley Register
The publisher of Encyclopaedia Britannica is phasing out the printed version of its namesake product after 244 years. But in libraries like Napa’s, the passing of the famous encyclopedia set has apparently left no more imprint than a bookmark on a page. In the glass-walled Teen Room behind two dozen computers in constant use, 15-year-old Ben Barush surfed the Internet from his laptop computer. That morning, the New Technology High School freshman had given a presentation on the John Steinbeck novel “Of Mice and Men.” “We made videos of alternate endings, embedded them into an electronic poster, then we presented them to upperclassmen who’d already read the book,” he said of the five-week multimedia assignment about the book and social attitudes toward a character’s mental disability. Absent from his list was even one volume of Britannica or any other similar reference collection.
Share on Facebook