Old encyclopedias and atlas

I would appreciate a suggestion on what to do with an encyclopedia set and atlas. Thanks

Any ideas on what to do with an encyclopedia set and atlas?

I'm saving my old atlases for paper crafts.

- Use them to look stuff up when your internet connection goes down/the power goes off/the apocalypse occurs
- The atlas will be invaluable if you ever find yourself in a Robinson Crusoe situation
- impress your friends by sharing information that’s even more out of date than Wikipedia
- Mine them for bitcoins
- If you have small (grand-)children, they will love building towers out of the big volumes. Especially to help them climb up to dangerous items on high shelves.
- Use them as sound-insulation
- Old encyclopaedias can be vital for maintaining the biodiversity of your home, providing an essential food-source for your silverfish community and a useful substrate for moulds and mildews
- If the spines still look good, use them as a backdrop for your YouTube talking-head videos
- Alternatively, sell them to a local furniture shop or a newly-qualified doctor/lawyer for shelf-filling purposes
- Hollow the pages out for your secret stash of weapons/drugs/alcohol/porn
- ...

Unbelievably, >4 thorold: missed one. As my parents did every Easter, insert a series of index card clues within the encyclopedia volumes in pursuit of Easter baskets.

G K Chesterton used an out of date set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to cover a drain in his garden, I seem to recall, but I can't give you a citation.

>6 haydninvienna: Sounds plausible, Chesterton wrote for Britannica and might well have got a set cut-price. But he approved of encyclopaedias:

An idealistic intellectual remarked recently that there were a great many things in the creed for which he had no use. He might just as well have said that there were a great many things in the Encyclopedia Britannica for which he had no use. It would probably have occurred to him that the work in question was meant for humanity and not for him. But even in the case of the Encyclopedia, it will often be found a stimulating exercise to read two articles on two widely different subjects and note where they touch. (The new Jerusalem)

- That comes from a passage where he’s just rubbished Islam and moves on to do the same for feminism and communism...

Elsewhere: “Give me the drain pipes of the Fabians rather than the panpipes of the later poets; the drain pipes have a nicer smell.”

Save them for a rainy day, pick one volume at random, and then spend the day hunting through it to find the deliberate copyright mistakes.