Encarta – The Dodo and the Dinosaur

Ozzy Osbourne is quoted as saying, "Of all the things that I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most." Well, that certainly applies in the case of Encarta. After nearly 20 years, Microsoft has decided to bow out of the electronic encyclopedia business. This is a watershed moment for many of us who've enjoyed the Encarta CD-ROMs packaged with PCs for years.

To hear that Wikipedia has taken over the market is a little scary to me. Wikipedia is an open-source knowledge repository, which is fine, but one issue with open-source technologies continues to be quality control. If I were a teacher, I would be skeptical of any information sourced from there. In order to truly verify information, you would need to track down the source of the information, if possible, and verify that source. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer a knowledge source that I can trust the first time.

For another take on the discontinuation of Encarta, see Elliot's recent post.

Update: Donations of Encarta are still available at TechSoup Stock for qualifying nonprofits and public libraries, but they must be processed by May 27. The electronic encyclopedia is available either as a standalone product or packaged with Microsoft Student. Either donation is available for an administrative fee of three dollars.

Photo: Matt Callow, CC license

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