Recently the library I manage received a 40 box donation of books from a religious house that had just closed in rural New South Wales. Four of the boxes carried a complete ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1875–89), unmarked, in near perfect condition.
This set must have been carted into the intense hinterland at the time by the German nuns, then referred to more or less continually for over a century. It is called the Scholars Edition, because a vast range of university experts made contributions, raising the Britannica to a new level of intellectual input and expectation.
It is not the most popular edition among buffs. That is the special preserve of the 11th edition, produced on rice paper in leather bindings, with contributors like Baden-Powell on kite-flying, Arthur Eddington on astronomy, Edmund Gosse on literature and Donald Tovey on music. Many of these entries are still read for pleasure and information today, though for some this is a way of spending the whole afternoon in 1912, which is apparently meant to be a safer and nicer world than 2012.
Libraries though are intended for more than historical diversions. Our 1889 acquisition will be catalogued then stored quietly in a stack room: some of the theology was avantgarde for its time.
Nothing has quite shaken the conventions of reference like the internet, and in particular its know-all eldest child, Wikipedia. Until ten years ago the great publishing houses with reference lines were expected to produce new, authoritative, concise volumes on subjects major and minor, every year. This expectation no longer holds, even if outstanding works of reference, often more niche than normative, keep reaching the shelves.
When confronted with the sesquipedalianest of all words, we are less likely to get out the dictionary than copy it into the search line of our computer. Now even figuring out how many esses there really are in a word leads us to the screen rather than the page and this reliance on Google to answer all questions has become an issue, even if most users aren't aware of it.
It is not just laziness, or an unthinking adherence to the false nostrum that if it isn't on the web it doesn't exist. Its permanent availability and the sheer scale of ready information it provides have become a comfort, even an addiction.
It took me ten seconds to find out who wrote for the 11th Britannica, because it says so on Wikipedia. I even learnt in less time that it takes to recite the alphabet, that this edition will soon be online: all those words, so little time.
In fact, many librarians are obsessed (three esses) with the reading habits, print and digital, of modern readers, which is why reference in particular is of deep concern.
There are teachers who will send students off on internet exercises in the hope of broadening horizons, while others threaten to fail their students if they even cite Wikipedia in an essay. Why is that? Wikipedia is the largest compendium of knowledge ever assembled under one title, with millions of entries, but authority control is based on the honesty of those who enter the data. This has been one of the secrets of its success.
Yet when vying claims for 'possession' of the knowledge come into play then we inevitably ask, who speaks with authority? Somedays Wikipedia looks like the most extravagant love letter to the humanist project, other days like the biggest ragbag of unsorted intellectual capital.
The author Sam Vankin has identified six sins of Wikipedia. It is opaque and encourages recklessness. It is anarchic, not democratic. Its editorial policy amounts to might is right. It is rife with libel and copyright violations. You can judge for yourself the seriousness of these sins. The two that interest me most are that Wikipedia is against real knowledge, and that it is not an encyclopedia.
Britannica had to up its game in the 19th century because its readers wanted dependability. It could no longer afford to be the preserve of amateur encylopedists.
The Victorians became dedicated to historical principles, so for example the Oxford English Dictionary had to be more than lists of words with definitions pulled from a file in one's head. Usage through time, shifts in meaning, spelling and sense were collected to provide the reader with the subtle historical description of each word. This required scholarship. Anyone of mature years could send in words, but only a committee of experts could discern how to select and edit the material.
This principle of expertise was also at work with Britannica, but is not so with Wikipedia. The fevered opinions of a new convert to a subject can displace the erudite judgements of an immortel of the Academy, with one clatter of the keyboard.
This is why encyclopedia is merely a term of convenience when describing Wikipedia. It is really an international collective of every kind of fact, and non-fact.
What is truly amazing is the sheer scale, even excess, of information. If everything on Wikipedia were reprinted in heavy leather volumes like the 9th Britannica it would fill a library of Borgesian proportions. Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentinian poet and blind librarian, once confessed that 'I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,' but one wonders if this what he had in mind. He would not have been impressed by the volumes full of stubs.
For me, Wikipedia is astounding as a reference work for where it leads you next. The availability of links to other places online is awesome and serves as a reminder that much of the best information about a subject is not on Wikipedia, but the sites that its pages send you to via those myriad of little blue letters on the pages, especially the ones at the end listed under External Links. Often now, that's the first place I go when searching for the best in-depth and reliable knowledge on the subject.
Is online really the source of all knowledge? Actually, no. I would advise that the specialist reference works in your library supply a massive amount of information that is not online and never will be. Even if it is online, you find it quicker by going to the book than surfing till sundown on the net, pleasurable as that may be to some mousers.
And it is well to remember why the ninth Britannica is in stack: information dates. There is nothing new under the sun, which is why we must treat Wikipedia's currency with the same caution we would for any purported fund of completest knowledge.
Philip Harvey is Eureka Street's poetry editor and head of the Carmelite Library of Spirituality in Middle Park, Victoria.