World Book 1999: The mother of all study materials
By Zatni Arbi
JAKARTA (JP): As I may be going on a short trip to America's "most interesting city" next month, I thought I should learn something about this famous place before I get on the airplane.
Sure, I had several alternative information sources. I could go on the Internet and search pages that contain the words New Orleans. AltaVista would give me a list of almost one million pages. HotBot immediately gave me "Love New Orleans", a very helpful tourist guide to the city. But what I wanted to know was what made it unique, and this website would not help much. Why not find a source with well-written information material? World Book 1999 Multimedia Encyclopedia immediately came to mind.
So I put CD 1 into the drive and ran 1999 World Book (Deluxe) from my Start menu. After the flash screen, I got the main menu. I clicked on Topics, and I was presented with a Spotlight on June page. I was not looking up special events for June, so I just typed in the words "New Orleans" in the Search by Topic field on the left and hit Enter. Immediately I got a list of topics related to this city, including Louisiana, the Civil War, jazz (of course!), Mardi Gras, New Orleans Saints and many others.
To the right of the list, World Book gave me an article which began with a map. With one or two mouse clicks, I could zoom in on the map and get a street map of the city. I could print it out if I wanted to.
In the introductory part of the article, I learned that the city was built in 1718, and I also learned how it got its French name. I scrolled down the page, and there was a picture of St. Louis Cathedral. A click on the image brought up an enlarged picture. I sure hope I'll have a chance to visit this magnificent building. I clicked on the Back icon on top, and I was back in the article. I could have clicked on the Go to Article button and got the same result.
Understandably, I was also curious about the encyclopedia's coverage on Indonesia. So I typed in Indonesia in the Search by Topic box. I got a decent list of related topics, including Asia, batik, Borneo, Garuda, Kalimantan, Timor, and The Netherlands. The article is very comprehensive. It covers aspects of the country, including the government, the history, the people, the climate, the islands and the economy. A time line is also provided, so we can see the major events in Indonesia's history at a glance. Sadly, there's not much to see, though. The article stops exactly at the resignation of Soeharto in May 1998. To my delight, however, at the end of the article it said that the article had been prepared by Harold Crouch of Australian National University, a very familiar figure among Indonesian sociopolitical observers.
Virtual Reality
World Book 1999, like its predecessor, is more about substance than bells and whistles. Although my Deluxe version comes in two CDs, they don't have a plethora of video clips. The strength lies in the well-researched and well-prepared articles. It covers mainly the subjects of geography, arts, science and mathematics.
Nevertheless, it has already employed virtual reality technology to show you multidimensional views of places such as the Colosseum in Rome and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo, Egypt. In World Book 1999, the technology is called 3-D Bubble Technology. Using the mouse, we can "turn our head" 360 degrees, or look up or down 360 degrees. If we place the cursor on a particular hot spot, we will "walk over" to another part of the building. Although the image quality still requires a lot of improvement, this represents the way we will travel in the virtual world in the near future.
Other interesting contents include an animation that explains how fossils were formed. I also liked the video on Henry Ford's pioneering use of conveyor belts in an automobile assembly line.
I found the use of the mouse and keyboard frustrating. To type in a new keyword in the Search by Topic field, we cannot use the Shift and arrow keys combinations. The Search, Dictionary and Article Outline windows occupy the same area on the screen, so you cannot have all three appearing at the same time. If you want to look at the collection of images, video and audio materials, you have to close the Search, Dictionary or Outline window first. There is no screen tip that will tell us what each icon on the list of multimedia materials represents.
The dictionary itself is a 225,000-entry Merriam-Webster's Reference Library. Unfortunately it does not have audio pronunciation. I think it's time for encyclopedias like this one to come in the DVD format, so that all the materials -- including the audio files of the pronunciation of the words -- can be put on a single platter. I found it rather annoying to have to swap the two CDs when I wanted to watch the video of the Pyramids, for instance.
Other strong features of World Book include its online update. If you have Internet access, with just a click you can download the latest updates to keep your encyclopedia current. As this encyclopedia is also intended as a study aid, there is also a Parents Resource Center where you can learn how to maximize World Book's educational benefits. At the end of each article, several review questions are provided to reinforce learning.
Perhaps not many of us would have guessed that World Book is actually an IBM product. If you're not aware of it, don't feel bad. We know IBM more as a maker of software, middleware, mainframes, midranges, PCs, notebooks, servers and lately networking products. An educational product like this one is a little surprise. What is arguably the best feature of this encyclopedia is its price. You can order it direct from the World Book Inc. (www.worldbook.com). The Deluxe version is only US$69, and you'll even get a $20 rebate. Compare that to the $199 price of the 22 volumes of the print version!
Whether you're looking for additional reference material or for study help for your teenage children, there's no reason why you shouldn't add World Book to your collection.