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:

On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009. We understand that Encarta users may have questions regarding this announcement so we have prepared this list of questions and answers below. Please keep reading if you would like more information about these changes to Encarta.

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.

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