set in the home is one of the "ba-
sics" to provide one's children,
and is a resource to which par-
ents turn for their own edifica-
tion as well. For them, a home
without "a decent set of encyclo-
pedias" is poor indeed.
Educators generally concur
that properly and frequently
used, an encyclopedia set can
become a valuable aid to learn-
ing, especially if parents and chil-

dren turn to the resource togeth-
er.
As for their availability in the
home or at a library, the choice is
largely one of convenience.

How To Begin Selection

If you've decided that having
a set of encyclopedias is right for
your family consider these guide-
lines for narrowing the field.
ENCYCLOPEDIA page P27

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access. This allows them to
read the information on-screen
without having to buy an en-
tire set of encyclopedias.
On-line delivery of a specific
encyclopedia article to a com-
puter means the consumer only
pays for actual usage, plus a
monthly fee for the on-line de-
livery. "More importantly,"
notes Britannica's editor in
chief Robert McHenry, "we can
keep content up-to-date for all
users."
For the person to whom in-
depth, accurate and timely in-
formation is critical, an on-line
encyclopedia article combines
the topicality of a periodical with
the benefit of the information
having been created by the en-
cyclopedia's staff scholars.
On-line delivery is a pub-
lisher's dream, for it eliminates
many publishing constraints
including costly and time-con
sliming printing. Every editor
juggles with space problems,
judiciously weighing the value
of every article and illustration
to best use the limited number
of pages.
With on-line delivery, a
"body" of inf'orrnation can be re-
vised and manipulated for vir-
tually the cost of the research,
writing and/or illustration. This
flexibility is simply not eco-
nomically feasible for book pub-
lishers, and despite every
encyclopedia publisher's high-
ly touted "update volumes," the
rapidity at which information

pedia
such as speedy
topic search; th
of interactivity
sounds, spoken wo
— not possible in a prin ted
medium.
Currently, however, pub-
lishers have sacrificed illustra-
tions (and in some cases 3xt)
because they are so costly, in
money, creation start-up ex-
pense and disk space.
World Book, for example, de-
scribes their pictures as "teach-
ing illustrations," but the
28,000 illustrations (24,000 of
which are in color) found in
their traditional print encyclo-
pedias have been reduced to a
mere 3,000 for the CD-ROM
version. And this is a typical
drawback for all the publishers
at this time.
For detailed reviews, consult
the library reference Soft-ware
Review On File//Survey of Mi-
crocomputer Software, both the
1993 and 1994 issues.
Here is a short "tour" of the
dominant CD-ROM encyclope-
dias on the market:
Encarta
Microsoft Enc.arta, from Mi-
crosoft Corp, retailing at $82
for Windows, $95 for Macin-
tosh, is based on the 29-volume
Funk and Wagnalls New En-
cyclopedia, but it also contains
a thousand articles created es-
pecially for Encarta (and un-
available in the paper version);

ELECTRONIC page P26

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