When the second of my husband's maternal grandparents, Classie Lawrence Mercer died in 1994, she left my husband the family's Encyclopedia Britannica. There were two sets of books, the Junior, and the regular set plus annual updates. The Mercers had the encyclopedia for years, having purchased them from a door to door salesman. They valued the books and decided to leave them to their grandson, Rick, a teacher.
Richard Mercer, Rick, Classie Lawrence Mercer
In the mid 1990s, the internet was available to people and encyclopedia were no longer necessary; libraries were not using them any more. Our school libraries would not take the books because they were obsolete. We were forced to discard them.
The value of the books can be understood when one considers the one room schools so common decades ago. A teacher, responsible for each subject in each grade in a school, relied on an encyclopedia to challenge the more senior students when she was busy with the others. For many young teachers, the books cost more than their yearly salaries. Thus the books were paid for over a number of years but their value was priceless. They afforded the teacher a source of knowledge at a time when such sources were few.
Both of Rick's grandparents died before they knew much, if anything, about computers and the internet. However, they understood the value of education and the importance of having access to the best information available. They wanted their teacher grandson to have that knowledge, as they knew it.