Above are the two volumes of “The Reader's Encyclopedia” published by T.Y. Crowell. Back in the day – the previous age not long ago when our fingers held the pages of books instead of skittering across content-providing keyboards – these books were bibles. Who was Gregory of Nyssa? What's an oboe d'amore? Or a good definition of pandemonium? I found the last one by opening up at random, often dangerous because bookies like me just keep on reading.
Google has removed the necessity of having the RE close at hand. Type in a phrase and it's all right there, or nearly. A friend who spent some years back in the 1970's researching and writing a book about her German family has begun working on the project again and finds that Google does in five minutes what it used to take her three years of letters, calls, library visits to discover.
Here's my question: If data/information makes it to the first “page” of a Google response does that make it “true” and the things on the second, third....infinite pages less true? More important, will this lesser information disappear? What happens when the lights go out? I'm keeping my Reader's Encyclopedia in case.
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