Was browsing around Project Gutenberg and came across a “Cyclopedia” of #Commerce, #Accountancy, #Business Administration published in 1910.
The forward was quite striking for a few reasons, see if you can spot them...
“With the unprecedented increase in our commercial activities has come a demand for better business methods. Methods which were adequate for the business of a less active commercial era, have given way to systems and labor-saving ideas in keeping with the financial and industrial progress of the world.
Out of this progress has risen a new literature—the literature of business. But with the rapid advancement in the science of business, its literature can scarcely be said to have kept pace, at least, not to the same extent as in other sciences and professions. Much excellent material dealing with special phases of business activity has been prepared, but this is so scattered that the student desiring to acquire a comprehensive business library has found himself confronted by serious difficulties. He has been obliged, to a great extent, to make his selections blindly, resulting in many duplications of material without securing needed information on important phases of the subject.
In the belief that a demand exists for a library which shall embrace the best practice in all branches of business—from buying to selling, from simple bookkeeping to the administration of the financial affairs of a great corporation—these volumes have been prepared. Prepared primarily for[9] use as instruction books for the American School of Correspondence, the material from which the Cyclopedia has been compiled embraces the latest ideas with explanations of the most approved methods of modern business.”
Who knows what you actually spotted, but to us, it is the demand for this “cyclopedia” that is most interesting. According to this forward, this 10-volume set was published because the information was not available in a centralized location yet in any official capacity. One would think that after a hundred years we would have overcome this issue, but we think it is still relevant today. The student of 1910 was suffering from the same INFORMATION OVERLOAD that still exists today. The information is out there in several, disorienting ways, and so the contemporary professional has to figure out how to synthesize this knowledge somehow.
AAAAAaaaaaaaanddddd..... now for the shameless part. Let us synthesize that knowledge for you and get yourself an accounting consultant! LOL! No but seriously, check us out at https://www.graycpaconsulting.com/ and shoot us a message if y’all every need help with something and the information overload is getting you down.
Check out Volume 1 of the Cyclopedia here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46448/46448-h/46448-h.htm