Electronic vs.hardcopy encys.

[fran wolfe <flwolfe@WAVE.PARK.WY.US>]

I had an interesting thing happen this week and I thought I would share it:
a student (6th grade) came in wanting to know the melting point of wax.
He said his teacher had told him to look in the electronic ency. so we did.
Grolier had an article on wax, but no mention of melting point.  Looked
then in hardbound science dictionaries and one-volume encyclopedias.  No
luck.  On a whim we pulled out a hardbound ency (colliers, to be specific)
and there it was.  Lesson I learned from this is that the abbreviation of
the articles in the electronic ency makes it very important that we do not
hastily give up our hardbound encys.  One point--we also have the elect.
World Book, but it was in use at the time so we did not check there.  Will
check later--I'm at home--and see if that one has it.  Even if it does I
will be hanging on to those multi-volume encys.  Happy Veteran's Day to
those of you who get it off!