Some of you former school kids might remember when the most reliable place to find the information required to write a book report was the World Book Encyclopedia.

Those volumes, whose spines in the 1970s were tinted hunter green and linen white, and whose page edges were gilded in gold, were popular back in the days when you could go months without hearing someone use the word “virtual” or “artificial intelligence,” or ask “Where’s my phone?”

The collection had several volumes, from A to Z, and some of the letters were condensed into one volume, like W-X-Y-Z. You’d have a...