The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : Browsing the Digital Reference Volumes

That big encyclopedia my parents bought in 1955 must have been an important set of books, for it still takes up a great deal of space at my mom’s house. That one edition, which represented a substantial investment, lasted through junior and senior high school.

I have encyclopedias where I live today, but they take up hardly any space at all and cost less than $80 apiece. They contain about the same amount of text as that old multivolume edition, but they also include movies, sound and animation. Today’s multimedia CDs also have a search function that makes it easier to find information.

The encyclopedia isn’t the only mainstay reference book that’s rapidly being displaced by the CD. The home I grew up in had an almanac, a thesaurus, a dictionary, a book of quotations and an atlas. Now a single CD-ROM--Microsoft Bookshelf--has all those tools. And, like the CD encyclopedia, they come to life with pictures, sounds and animation.

Even that most definitive of all reference works, the Bible, is going electronic. Compton’s Complete Multimedia Bible doesn’t let you hear God’s voice, but it does provide some divine research tools to ferret out the Scriptures. The disc includes the complete text of the King James version along with music, maps, photos and video clips, as well as readings by actor James Earl Jones. Other electronic Bibles include the Judaic Classics Hebrew-English Bible for Windows and several editions from a company called Biblesoft.

While the appeal of an electronic Bible might not be obvious, it is clear that for most types of reference works, digital technology offers powerful advantages. Indeed, it’s one of the few areas in which a CD-ROM book is likely to be better than the print version.

Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia and Microsoft Encarta come on single CD-ROMs. Although they vary in look and feel, they have a lot in common: Each is the equivalent of at least 20 printed volumes and contains articles, animation, videos and audio presentations.

I don’t have a strong favorite among the three major encyclopedias. Microsoft has done a phenomenal job including tons of videos, audio and animation, but I found its interface a bit confusing at first. Compton’s has done a good job coming up with a system that’s easy to navigate without sacrificing the basic search tools. The company is set to release its 1996 edition, which includes a direct link to its encyclopedia on America Online. Grolier offers breadth of coverage with a good set of search tools, including a time line of historical events.

None of these encyclopedias covers every subject as thoroughly as a specialized book or CD. And they’re not the Encyclopaedia Britannica: Some of the entries are frustratingly short and superficial, and the video and sound clips often seem like a gimmick. Still, they’re a good place to start and probably will contain at least something on almost any subject.

For other types of reference works, the search capabilities of the computer render the electronic versions much more useful than their print counterparts. In addition to Microsoft Bookshelf, the Mindscape ([415] 883-3000) Reference Library offers all of the basic reference volumes along with the Legal Word Book, the National Directory of Addresses and Telephone Numbers and the Readers Companion to American History. The National Directory has contact information on millions of U.S. businesses. You can search each book individually or search across books. Enter “lotus,” and you get lotus position from the dictionary, lotus eaters from the encyclopedia and Lotus Development Corp. from the National Directory.

Both the Microsoft and Mindscape products have a smattering of multimedia offerings, but frankly, the important thing about a reference work is its ability to come up with the necessary text. After all, reference books are for research, not entertainment. I have no qualms with glitzy multimedia as long as it’s in addition to the basic textual information. Microsoft Bookshelf is strong in both areas.

If you have only an occasional need for an encyclopedia and you don’t need the fancy graphics and multimedia, you can access full encyclopedias on any of the major on-line services. America Online and Prodigy offer Compton’s Encyclopedia, while CompuServe provides access to the Grolier Academic American Encyclopedia. Prodigy has announced that it will soon add multimedia elements to its version of Compton’s. Microsoft Network, which is scheduled to debut when Microsoft rolls out Windows 95 on Aug. 24, is expected to include an on-line multimedia edition of Microsoft Bookshelf.

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Lawrence J. Magid can be reached at [email protected] on the Internet or KPVN58A on Prodigy.