Encyclopedias

I had some friends over last night(still paying the price) and conversation went at one point to my course and we got talking about wikis (they knew Wikipedia). One of my friends reflected that she used to love the Encyclopedia Britannica. I book that she would quite happily read for hours on the search for some specific information and getting way-layed by lots of other different stuff (as now happens in Wikipedia). I remember that we had a set at my primary school and my grandparents may have had them. I think that at one point that there were door to door salesmen who used to sell you a set (it reminds me recently of US Amazon seller printing books of popular wikipedia articles) and you were proud to have these at your disposal on a shelf in your living room. I'm not sure how they fit into other reference type books. Did people used to use them to look for information much in the same way we now use Google? Henry Jenkins (What Wikipedia can teach us about the new media literacies (part one)) says that it is a powerful word with connotations of reliability. Who certifies that knowledge, is it something like peer review? I think he also says that most Encyclopedia are out of date. Aparently (according to Wikipedia) the first encylopedia dates from about 2000 years ago written by Pliny the Elder and the word Encyclopedia means something like recurrent or general knowledge. I'm interested to find more about these Encyclopedias
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As for Wiki's apparently that word comes from the Wiki Wiki shuttle bus from Honolulu airport to the city centre. I went there last year and say these buses but I'm kicking myself because we got herded onto a different plush coach or I didn't even get a picture. (This picture from the Wikipedia article on wikis, by Andrew Laing)

Also really useful site for the Wayback machine: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php