this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I remember they used to have door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen. Thinking back on it, we had book stores back then, so people could have gotten encyclopedias from there, so how did encyclopedia salesmen make any sales??

At any rate, at some point, my parents had purchased a short set of encyclopedias. They weren't as good as the ones at the school or library, but it was something like 4-5 large books.

And despite what people think today, I don't think those encyclopedias were as good or as accurate as Wikipedia is today. Wikipedia is so nice. If you want to know more about a part that's not covered well in the article, you can just go look at the source.

[–] leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thinking back on it, we had book stores back then, so people could have gotten encyclopedias from there, so how did encyclopedia salesmen make any sales??

If I recall correctly you couldn't buy the big encyclopaedias in bookstores (dictionaries and single book encyclopedias, sure, but not the big multiple volume ones), only through their sellers or by phone.

And they often came with a subscription to get new update appendixes and the like.

(Also most of these door to door salespeople probably also carried other products, like subscriptions to magazines and whatnot; and, an average encyclopedia being at least ten volumes, going up to twenty or so, they weren't cheap, so they didn't need that many sales.)

[–] DiskCrasher@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Our family had the whole set. At least a dozen books by alphabetical order.

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