Seeing as how Wikipedia is crumbling around itself and the Internet at large is all lies, is it time to look back to the dusty elegance of a physical encyclopedia? More to the point, if Cleveland and Chicago have their own and New York is cruising towards two, why are we sitting on our hands here? WHHY’s overlooked Sixth Square blog has been all abuzz about this thing since historian Gary Nash rattled off reasons for a Phillypedia project, besides the fact that America’s first encyclopedia was printed here. Nash knows, though, that the way to Philly’s heart is stoking a competition between us and other cities:

Twenty years ago, a yearning for Cleveland pride as the city was trying to recover as a victim of rust-belt syndrome led to the publication of an encyclopedia for that city. Now, even more sophisticated models are now available, most notably New York and Chicago … The Encyclopedia of New York City, published twelve years ago, has sold more than 80,000 copies to date – one of Yale University Press’s top-five best sellers in its century-long history.

As a call to arms for our civic pride, an encyclopedia project isn’t exactly volcanic. But as Nash observes, we’ve got enough local history down on ink already that the thing is practically half-written. If nothing else, it’d take some attention off all that murderin’ for a hot second.
The Sixth Square: Encyclopedi-ite!
Related: The Race Is On!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 4:38 pm.