What do I do with Old Encyclopedias?

[Resolute 14]

My mom used to have a 1978 Encyclopedia Brittanica. It was intersting to read 20 years later. Especially when Calgary had like 250,000 people, Airdrie had something stupid like 378, etc. As part of the deal back then, she got an annual supplement that was about 300 pages and covered, in depth, the news of the year. I rather wish she had kept those - full coverage of the 1980 and 84 Olympic boycotts (the 88 Calgary games was the year after the deal ran out, grr), Mt. St. Helens erupting, Challenger. It was pretty cool.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

I just checked my encyclopedia. Population was 636k in 1989. The picture of the cityscape showed the Calgary Tower as being the tallest building by a long shot. But that doesn't seem right. I thought the Petro Canada buildings were built by then. Weird.

Anybody else want something they want me to look up from 1989 before I let go of these bad boys on Saturday?

[Bill Bumface]

Not sure if this will work, but here is downtown October 5, 1988 from the Glenbow archives:

[Bill Bumface]

May '72:

Eau Claire looks like a neighborhood!

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

I just checked my encyclopedia. Population was 636k in 1989. The picture of the cityscape showed the Calgary Tower as being the tallest building by a long shot. But that doesn't seem right. I thought the Petro Canada buildings were built by then. Weird.

Anybody else want something they want me to look up from 1989 before I let go of these bad boys on Saturday?

Petro Canada was built in 1984 an Bankers Hall East was built in 1989 so it would have been the third tallest.

[Barnes]

My neighborhood (Copperfield) in 1988. That's McKenzie Lake on the left.


Bankers Hall U/C in 1989.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

The photo in the encyclopedia must have been immensely dated. It looked way closer to the '72 photo. Stupid encyclopedia!

[Bill Bumface]

It's kind of funny people complain about our downtown being a ghost town after looking at these pictures. It wouldn't even be that busy during lunch hour on a week day back then!

I'm so proud of our little city for growing up

[Buff]

Libraries have no use for old encyclopedias. They want to be able to provide the latest info. I recently tried to get rid of my 1983 World Book Encyclopedias. No Libaries in Southern Alberta would take them. We even tried to give them to some charity that takes all your old items you don't want and they wouldn't take the encyclopedias either.

You are lucky that you found somebody to take them. For others who are in a similar situation in the future. Just rip the cover off and then the pages can be recycled.