Encyclopedia Britannica at the New York Public Library at 5th Ave. in New York, March 13, 2013. The encyclopedia maker could have become a casualty of the Wikipedia era. But it has remade itself into a digital learning giant that is weighing going public. — Angel Franco/The New York Times
For nearly 250 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was a bookshelf-busting series of gilt-lettered tomes, often purchased to show that its owners cared about knowledge.
It was the sort of physical media expected to die in the internet era, and indeed, the encyclopedia’s publisher announced that it was ending the print edition in 2012. Skeptics wondered how Britannica the company could survive in the age of Wikipedia.
