I think the big size meant that they thought that they were important -- changing the world, right?
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I think the format is similar to catalogs today in terms of pictures being prevalent and more appealing to readers. The size of the actual catalog and pages are much larger than modern ones. In my opinion, the goals of the contributors were to sell a variety of different equipment to customers by using pictures to appeal to them. The readership would most likely vary depending on the section, like science people vs. people who need hunting supplies.
Trevor Morris
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Honestly, the format of this catalog is quite more broader than the ones that are available in the modern era. I mean, the main goal of catalogs today and back then are pretty similar in the right that its enticing the reader to buy or even sell something. It's honestly a toss up with the readership of the catalog. All depends on the motive of the reader and what he/she is looking for.
Steven Coy
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I think the catalogs are both similar and different to today's catalogs. They both teach people about certain things, and they also sell items where we can purchase through the mail. Some things that are different are the size of the font, which I totally don't mind, because I find little things cute and adorable! The layout is also different from normal catalogs, because it is jumbled up in order to save paper.
Jessica Lai
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In my opinion the Whole Earth Catalogs it is very different from the catalogs we have today. Catalogs nowadays are more targeting with respect of who they sell them to, also the catalogs nowadays are mostly disposable and the WEC it is a big catalog and I’m pretty sure people with keep them for further use. I see the WEC more like an EBay web page or an Amazon page, where you can find almost everything. And the organization on the catalog it’s amazing you can notice the effort and time that people back then took to made this catalog something easy to go through. About the price I’m sure that nearly none of the people with pay for a catalog today, because after paying for it you are most likely to spend again in something on the catalog, that’s why most of the catalogs today are free.
Christian Morris
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I found the Whole Earth Catalogs to be very interesting in comparison with today's scientific catalogs. In modern times, it seems quite archaic to still use paper print especially when many things are made available through the internet via an extensive shopping website, or can be used in word processor or pdf formats. By implementing computer based documents, it eliminates the need to compact different sections into limited space, whereas using computer accessing documents allow for infinite pages. The bigger size of the pages may have been an attempt to be a distinguishing iconic feature. According to some technology writers from The Guardian, they stated how Whole Earth Catalogs can be analogous as the Google of it's time, or as the "book of the future".
Donny
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I thought the catalogs were an interesting combination between different parts of modern life. The variety of books available for order from the Whole Earth catalog remind me of the Scholastic Book catalogs available to students in middle school. The categorization of organization reflects the organization of things found in other now outdated forms of printed information such as encyclopedias. But the main difference I noticed between the Whole Earth Catalog and the catalogs and publications of today are the emphasis on purely selling items to consumers. While the Whole Earth Catalog's goal was to simple educate people and connect people which also included selling items.
Ksenia Komarnyckyj
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My first impression of the Whole Earth Catalogs was fairly specific as I examined several aspects of it. The first aspect that I noticed was how it was a large yet inefficient way of obtaining information even though it was a clever way of delivering product advertisements. As I read through the catalog, it also seemed like the contributor's goal was to inform and advertise to the audience. Furthermore, the audience was a readership that was composed of any adults who could read. Toward the end of my examination, I estimated that the catalog's cost was equivalent to about $12 today. Overall, I think that the catalog was an innovated way of delivering new information and advertisements to readers across the United States.
Becka Nguyen
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