Encarta Encyclopedia Free Download For Pc [PATCHED]
Sharyl Viken
Ars Technica reports that Microsoft has decided to discontinue their encyclopedia software, Encarta. Both the MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software will be shut down. Microsoft said:
Clearly, Wikipedia is the dominating online encyclopedia these days. Of course, that leaves concern in the library community for accuracy of encyclopedia content. I am not an expert in this area, so hopefully we will bring on someone to write a more detailed analysis of this change.
If you are a fortunate child of the mid-90s you'll have experience with Encarta, the interactive CD-based encyclopedia from Microsoft. My son being taught how to research a subject (penguins, if you must know) thrust this iconic bit of the 90s back into my thoughts, no doubt like how a jewel thief might rekindle past heists when teaching their children how to make a plan. Encarta for me is more than an impressive archive of information. It's part of a devious scheme that made me who I am today.
If you didn't exist in the mid-90s or were too young to function as a person, this was an era before the internet - something that would only become mainstream in the home in the late 90s/early 2000s. If you needed to do research for something, such as science homework, you'd need to read a book or hope a parent knew everything there is to know about electromagnets. Some families had printed encyclopedias on a big bookshelf. I wasn't interested in those as they didn't fit into my grand plan.
Encarta, a PC-based encyclopedia that I'd used at school, would, in all fairness to 12-year-old me, be very useful, but I was absolutely using my education as a Trojan horse. I (and it should be said, my brother) wanted a PC to play games on, so work began on a sales pitch.
The Encarta Encyclopedia was used by the students for learning science as well as some historical events. Students also used the encyclopedia to learn the English language. Encarta Encyclopedia was an educational software program that allows students to interact with a myriad of features.