Before the Internet, my friends and I would call the research desk at the local library. We'd sit around someone's house and have a debate over some topic. If, and when, we had a point of contention that we couldn't resolve with the resources at hand, we'd phone up the research desk. The folks at our local library were more than happy to place the phone down on the desk, go grab some reference material, and then pick the phone back up and give us a definitive answer.
For me, "Growing Up With Science" encyclopedia was pure ellation. From the subject matter to the explanations of use and application to the beautiful illustrations. I purchased a complete set a while ago when my child was born and shared the experience with them as well.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4760487-growing-up-with-...
Mine was "Tell Me Why" which I still have on my shelf some 35 years after I recieved it for a birthday. I'm afraid to touch it, lest it crumble to dust before my eyes. It is so well worn from me thumbing through it's pages as a wee info junkie that the cover is just about fallen off. I can't bear to let go of it, since it represents something important to me; that information should be distributed. Now, whether or not there was adequate fact-checking in that book (or other encyclopedias I read as a kid) is another discussion...
Just unlocked a memory for me. I only had one of those books and read it incessantly for a time, dreaming of having the complete set. Now I have to check ebay!
My parents bought me a concise Encyclopedia for teenagers, I forgot the name (it was made overseas). Not Britannica, but still had some 12 volumes. I loved it and was my bathroom reading in my pre-teen and early teen years, alongside the occasional computer books. It was not very different from Wikipedia but the language was a lot more accessible.
Kids these days rarely have patience for this sort of thing, at least my kid doesn't. There is just too much overstimulating information everywhere - how can an Encyclopedia compete with TikTok and Youtube algorithms that leave the child laughing nonstop?
> Kids these days rarely have patience for this sort of thing, at least my kid doesn't.
It's not just your kid, I know some long-time K-12 teachers and they would agree with you, to say the least. This is something they've been complaining about since before covid.
In that vein, there was "An Incomplete Education" [1].
It's roughly what you'd get if you asked a class of seniors a week before their graduation to write a few paragraphs on every topic they covered in college. Not a serious source, but enough to whet deeper interest or start a conversation.
"Very Short Introductions" [2] were also great to trade with friends.
Another reference book I've always loved is Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It's been around since 1870, and you can always flick through it and find something interesting.
One cool thing that came with the Britannica was a sheet of stamps. If there was something you wanted to know that didn't have an entry you could send them a letter, including one of the stamps, and they would respond with a custom entry. We used all of the stamps.
