Building A Reference Desk(Top) -- Stacks Of CD-Rom Discs Are The Building Blocks For Today's Home Library

The thought didn't require a lot of imagination. If you can fit the text of 100 books onto a CD-ROM, then you could have all the text of a big reference-book set like an encyclopedia and a splash of multimedia, all on a single compact disc.

No surprise, then, that most of the earliest CD-ROM titles were reference books made digital. While there's much more variety on disc now, reference CDs are still among the most popular and plentiful.

In an age when knowledge is power, anybody with a multimedia-equipped computer and a few hundred dollars can assemble a serious library without being overwhelmed for shelf space.

The best CD-ROM reference titles approach the depth and accessibility of books and also offer some things books can't, including the ability to quickly search for and index information, copy facts into another application and add understanding through multimedia tools like sound and moving pictures.

If you want to find every article in a paper encyclopedia on, say, King Henry III of France, you can look up an article on him. If it's a good reference book, it might list a few other articles in which he appears. But a CD-ROM can find every mention of him everywhere in the "book," as well as hypertext "links" to articles about related topics.

The computer program can cross-index very effectively and quickly. For example, you can search a book of famous quotations for all quotes that refer to both "freedom" and "irony," something you could never accomplish by hand.

Most programs also allow you to export the material, be it text or picture, to another file. A national directory of phone numbers can provide a list of all businesses of a specific type within a ZIP code, for example. You could export the companies' records as a set of addresses to be used in a mailing or incorporated in your own database.

When most people think about CD-ROMs, they think "multimedia": sound, photographs, animation and full-motion video. In truth, though, most CD-ROMs do not make good use of multimedia if they use it at all. Like an 8-year-old getting into the spice rack while cooking, most of the CD-ROMs' chefs are randomly throwing multimedia elements into the recipe to try to add zest, but without knowing exactly why.

Multimedia is frosting anyway. If the information is not deep and accessible, all the frosting in the world is not going to make the product worthwhile.

That said, it is possible to put together a pretty good set of reference material on your computer. Here is one highly subjective compilation.

All-in-one reference

Can you fit an entire reference library into one product? Mindscape and Microsoft believe so, but I think that's only true for people with very sparse needs. To get eight or 10 books onto a CD-ROM requires trimming everywhere.

The two best for completeness and convenience are Mindscape Complete Reference Library and Microsoft Bookshelf '95.

The biggest advantage to both is a single index for a whole set of source books: dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, thesaurus, quotations dictionary, and more. Punch in a word and the program delivers a list of references throughout the set, so you can examine the dictionary entry, the synonyms in the thesaurus and quotations that use the word, one right after the other.

While I prefer Mindscape's material selection (it includes the National Directory of Addresses & Telephone Numbers and Foner's Reader's Companion to American History), Bookshelf '95 has a slight edge because of its clearer interface and the way it encourages you to explore related topics.

You'll need one of these in your library, if nothing else because it has content you can't easily get separately, such as an almanac. Still, having an all-in-one doesn't constitute having a reference library on your computer.

Dictionary

If you only have one reference book, it has to be a dictionary. There are several good ones, packaged both as single products or as part of a reference collection.

If I had to choose one, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Deluxe Electronic Edition would be it. Its 160,000 entries are thorough, and although you wouldn't call it a pretty product, it's easy to work with and includes excellent entries on word origins, as well as synonyms and antonyms.

It's also a boon for lousy spellers: Give it the letters you know in a word and it will list the possibilities.

Encyclopedia

The two main contenders here are pretty evenly matched. Both are highly accessible but shallow, dumping longer text articles in favor of flashy multimedia elements.

If looks are what you care about, Microsoft's Encarta '95 is the better-looking. The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia does a better job of tying subjects together with short video essays (Stephen Jay Gould on Great Thinkers, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Fiction and Buzz Aldrin on Explorers, for example).

Both make it simple to see related articles with a mouse click and offer copious links in each article. Both support fine-tuning of searches, and both provide a lot of multimedia.

Unfortunately, neither has the depth of a paper encyclopedia. The multimedia clips, while fun and (in some cases) informative, take up lots of space (10 seconds of video can occupy the same space as 400 pages of text) so depth gets squeezed out here in favor of glitz.

Publishers could easily include complete text if they were willing to dump the multimedia or deliver the title on two discs.

Almanac/yearbook

Every good reference shelf needs an almanac, yet I couldn't find a decent one available as a stand-alone title. Unless you get one of the all-in-one products mentioned above, this might be a place to stick with paper.

Family medical reference

There are two great, very different choices here, and if you're interested in home medical information you may want both in your library.

Ivi Publishing's Mayo Clinic Family Health Book parallels the paper version of that excellent book. It's organized into broad topics such as "Lifecycles" and "Keeping Fit, " and it includes a section describing the business of modern medecine that helps negotiate the health care system. The program invites you to describe symptoms, and then reports possible causes and suggests home treatments.

Applied Medical Informatics' Medical HouseCall is less an encyclopedia than a doc-in-a-box. It puts together a data management system for keeping medical records on each family member, helps you find possible drug interactions and describes common medical tests (with their risks and what you should expect to pay for them).

One of the best features is the symptom analyzer. After an interview conducted by the program (including follow-up questions based on your answers), you end up with a list of possible conditions ranked by likelihood, along with a recommendation when appropriate to visit a physician. Since Applied Medical builds expert systems for training physicians, this tool is pretty sophisticated, although not particularly pretty.

The Mayo Clinic provides a great "big picture" view, Medical HouseCall gives you a way to manage details. They make a great addition to a reference shelf.

National phone book

CD-ROM makes it possible to have all the phone books in the country in one product. You can get specialized lists that fit on one disc, or the entire nation on four or more discs.

The computer has some big advantages over paper here: searching and selecting. You can instantly change from an alphabetical listing to a reverse directory (by number, for when you get those pesky long-distance bills) to just certain kinds of businesses or just a last name regardless of location.

There are two big players in this market, Pro CD and Digital Directory Assistance (DDA). Both are very fast (especially from DOS), and have comparable features and prices. Neither is a bad choice, but I prefer DDA's Phone Disc Power Finder '95, a five CD-ROM set. It seems a fraction cleaner and more up-to-date.

World atlas

This is a place where a computer could add a lot of value but doesn't. The all-in-ones usually have maps, and Microsoft's has its own Atlas module, but these are next to useless. The computer should bring maps to life, increasing detail as you zoom in.

The maps in these products are sketchy and dull, without significant road or economic detail. If you have to get one, the best of the lot is Mindscape World Atlas, but I recommend you stick to a book here.

Travel road atlas

The CD-ROM travel atlas is supposed to combine travel information with road maps and route planning. It usually has multimedia clips and pictures of sights of interest.

The weakest feature, though often the most heavily promoted, is the route planning. You provide start and end points, and some personal taste information (you like National Parks, you hate interstate highways, etc.) and the program consults the database and comes up with a precise itinerary with directions and times and mileage.

Yet the ability to produce sensible routes falls far short of expectations. When I instructed one product to take me from Seattle to Santa Fe, N.M., with stops in Zillah, Wash., and Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, it took me all the way to Colorado, backtracking to Zillah before taking me to New Mexico.

I'd suggest staying away from this category for now.

National street atlas

While we ex-taxi drivers are compelled to have a street atlas for every conceivable location, most people aren't interested in those big hefty Thomas Bros.-like books you keep under your front seat.

That's too bad, because among all the reference titles on the market in any category, the single most effective replacement for a paper version is DeLorme's StreetAtlas USA. This CD-ROM includes a detailed street map for every big city and small town in the United States and Canada, from New York to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to Port Hardy, B.C.

As you zoom in, the map reveals more details. You can find the place you want through name or zip code, and if you want to find an exact address, you can have the program highlight a specific block. StreetAtlas USA prints decent-enough maps and seems current, judging by examples from recent developments around Seattle.

------------------ FOR YOUR REFERENCE ------------------

Here is a list of featured CD-ROM reference programs:

-- Mindscape Complete Reference Library, Mindscape, (415) 897-9900, Windows, $79.95.

-- Bookshelf '95, Microsoft, (800) 426-9400, Mac, Windows, $69.95.

-- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Deluxe Electronic Edition, Merriam-Webster Electronic Publishing, (800) 696-0514, Mac, Windows, $49.95.

-- Encarta '95, Microsoft, (800) 426-9400, Mac, Windows, $99.95.

-- The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Grolier Electronic Publishing, (800) 285-4535, Mac, Windows, $49.95. (The 1996 edition is due around the end of September.)

-- Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, IVI Publishing, (800) 432-1332, Mac, Windows, $40.95.

-- Medical HouseCall, Applied Medical Informatics, (800) 584-3060, Mac, Windows, $59.95.

-- Phone Disc PowerFinder '95, Digital Directory Assistance Inc., (800) 284-8353, Mac, Windows, $159.

-- Mindscape World Atlas, Mindscape, (415) 897-9900, Mac, Windows, 59.95.

-- Automap Road Atlas, Microsoft, (800) 426-9400, Mac, Windows, $39.95

-- Street Atlas USA, DeLorme, (800) 227-1656, Mac, Windows, $79.