I live in the computer age and I love it here! I have long embraced pixels, multi-screen work stations and the information superhighway. I really can picture a paperless world.

And yet, I grew up in a very different place. When I was born in 1960, paper was where great knowledge was recorded.

In my house, all through the 1960s and 1970s, our family worshipped the World Book Encyclopedia – the photos, the maps, the flags of different countries, the handy sidebars revealing each state's population, motto and average elevation. I didn't read every word of every volume of the World Book, but I gave it a shot.

I was fascinated by how it all came together. Who wrote that section on the aardvark?

How that must have been, to have the World Book editors call and say, " You know aardvarks better than anyone. Would you write an entry for us? " Then there was the Z volume. Who was the person deemed enough of a Zulu expert to create that entry?

Was he or she a Zulu?