CDCDNEP7.RVW   970310
 
"The 1997 Canadian Encyclopedia Plus", McClelland & Stewart, 1997,
0-7710-1970-X, C$79.95
%A   McClelland & Stewart
%C   481 University Avenue, Toronto, ON   M5G 2E9
%D   1997
%G   0-7710-1970-X
%I   McClelland and Stewart Inc.
%O   C$79.95 +1-416-598-1114, fax: +1-416-598-4002, tlyon@mcclelland.com
%T   "The 1997 Canadian Encyclopedia Plus on CD-ROM"
 
Based primarily upon the material in "The Canadian Encyclopedia", this CD-ROM
extends the full (and somewhat updated) content from the print edition with
audio, video, and graphics, as well as the complete text of the Gage Canadian
Dictionary, The Columbia Encyclopedia, a French-English dictionary and Roget's
Thesaurus.  Together with the search engine and a relatively intuitive
interface, the package is a very useful and educational tool.
 
The package will run under either Windows or Macintosh.  System requirements
are fairly steep, in terms of multimedia, but a great deal of the text
information is still accessible without advanced graphical displays or sound
cards.  The package can be run strictly from the CD-ROM, or an installation can
be done onto the user's hard disk.  (Running the encyclopedia from CD-ROM only
requires a prior installation of QuickTime for access to the multimedia clips.)
 
With CD-ROM based encyclopedias, search capabilities are very important.  The
encyclopedia section provides for four types of searching: by title, subject,
boolean search and "smart search".  The boolean search appears to do a full
text search, rather than restricting the user to canned indices.  Smart search
is rather interesting.  It does not appear to require that all terms appear in
the articles it finds, but does seem to rank order listings on the basis of
frequency of the appearance of terms.  There also seems to be some kind of
thesaurus function which adds terms: a search for "Avro" and "Arrow" brought up
articles with the term "CF": the designation for Canadian fighter aircraft (of
which Avro built a number).  In any case, all searches are conducted very
quickly.
 
A trial of the dictionary was interesting.  It listed Zamboni (although it
didn't know of any synonyms), but presented the phonetic spelling by replacing
the "o" with a one-half symbol and open double quotes, and the "i" with a
paragraph mark.  It didn't like "saltchuck", but did tell me to look up "salt
chuck" instead.  The definitions of these and other terms were fairly terse,
but accurate.  (It didn't list "hoser", or any variants, and an "Arrow" is
either shot from a bow or indicates direction.)
 
In addition to the standard search and access tools, the package includes a
quiz function, timeline, and MacLean's Year in Review features.  It is also
supported by monthly updates available over the Internet.
 
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1997   CDCDNEP7.RVW   970310

======================
roberts@decus.ca         rslade@vcn.bc.ca         slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
link to virus, book info at http://www.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/techrev/rms.html
Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER)