A generation or two ago, encyclopedia salesmen would scour neighborhoods, knocking on doors in search of parents willing to part with several months' pay to help ensure the educational success of their children. Their wares often became a fixture of family rooms, growing old, dusty and woefully out of date.
Now you can free up those bookcases for novels or knickknacks and use your personal computer to consult an even more impressive set of up-to-date reference works.
PHOTO: MY TIMES
There are basically two approaches. You can purchase a suite of reference tools on CD-ROM or DVD or you can get access to encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases and other reference works on the Internet. Some Internet sites charge a monthly or annual fee, but others are free. There are even ways for library patrons and students to get free access to some of the fee-based services.
CD-ROM or DVD products like the Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite or the Microsoft Encarta Reference Library can easily be kept current with online updating and give you far more information than an encyclopedia. The Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite comes with three encyclopedias: the big 32-volume set, a lighter version for students and another for those in the early elementary grades. You also get two Merriam-Webster dictionaries, two thesauruses, an atlas and thousands of images, animations and videos.
The Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2003 also comes with an extensive encyclopedia and quite a few extras, including a book of quotations, a dictionary, a thesaurus and an atlas. Both have plenty of video, audio and pictures as well as homework helper tools.
The CD-ROM versions of the two products come with multiple discs that you have to swap in and out, but if you have a DVD drive, you can get either set on a single DVD. Better yet, both products give you the option of installing the program and all the data on your PC's hard drive. That takes up a whopping 2.5GB but saves you the time and trouble of inserting the CDs or DVD each time you need access. If you bought a PC recently, you probably have enough space on your hard drive. If not, you will need to load the CDs or DVD each time.
Broadband access helps
If you have a broadband connection like DSL or cable, it might be faster to use a Web version of an encyclopedia. The full online versions of both Encarta and Britannica have the same text and most of the photographs, maps and illustrations of the disc-based versions, although they lack some of the video and audio material. Whether that matters depends on the project and the person using the encyclopedia. Students, especially elementary school pupils, can benefit from the multimedia experience of the disc-based products, but if you are researching a paper, the text and illustrations may be all you need.
Britannica (www.britan-nica.com) charges US$59.95 a year for access to its online version; Microsoft offers access to its full online version, Encarta Online Deluxe (available at www.encarta.msn.com), only to those who buy the CD or DVD version. Encarta does not have an online-only subscription option for consumers. The Encarta Reference Library, on CDs or DVD, is US$75; the Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe, available on CD only, is US$45. The disc-based version of Britannica costs about US$60 but can sometimes be found for as little as US$40.
The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (US$29.95, www.grolier.com) comes on two CDs and includes a 60,000-article encyclopedia, a world atlas and a student research center. At the Grolier site, click on "Grades 7(plus)".
The World Book Encyclopedia Deluxe Windows CD-ROM (US$23 for Windows or US$74 for Mac OS X, at www.worldbook.com) is also a two-CD set with every article from the print edition plus 9,400 illustrations and two hours of video.
If you have an extra US$995 along with 2m of bookshelf space, you can buy the 20-volume printed version of the Oxford English Dictionary. The CD-ROM version is also expensive, at US$295, as is a one-year (US$550) subscription to the online version (pricing is different for schools and libraries).
For US$89 a year, however, individuals can subscribe to Oxford Reference Online (www.oxfordreference.com), which includes a variety of smaller Oxford dictionaries, including the 240,000-entry Concise Oxford Dictionary and the 180,000-entry Oxford American Dictionary of Current English, a law dictionary and other resources.
But before you spend money on a reference tool, consider the alternatives. If you're a student or a parent, check with your local school librarian or the Web site or reference desk at your local library to see if free access to fee-based reference services like Britannica, eLibrary or the Oxford English Dictionary is available.
Many libraries subscribe to electronic data services that you can use from home by supplying your library card number and a personal identification number.
The New York Public Library (www.nypl.org), for example, provides free home access to the Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, World Book Online and Encyclopedia Americana along with lots of specialized resources. Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County Library is one of many libraries that provide free access to Encyclopedia Britannica Online. The Los Angeles Public Library (www.lapl.org) offers free home access to the Oxford English Dictionary. (Many public libraries will issue cards to people who live out of town, though you often have to apply in person.)
Some libraries in the US will let you take CDs and DVDs home; most provide access at the library. It's a good way to preview an electronic resource before you buy.
Both Encarta and Britannica have free online abridged editions. Britannica's is highly abbreviated -- basically a teaser to entice you to subscribe -- but Encarta's free online edition is reasonably comprehensive, though certainly not as complete as the deluxe version.
Encyclopedia.com, a service of Tucows, provides free access to 57,000 updated articles from the Columbia Encyclopedia. ELibrary, another Tucows service, offers additional resources for US$14.95 a month or US$79.95 a year.
Dictionary.com draws on a variety of references, like the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and the Census Bureau's US Gazetteer. Merriam-Webster (www.m-w.com) provides free access to its Collegiate Dictionary and Collegiate Thesaurus and paid access (US$29.95 a year or US$4.95 a month) to its unabridged edition. Thesaurus.com is free.
Biography.com has information on "over 25,000 of the greatest lives, past and present."
Bartleby.com offers a number of free advertiser-supported reference tools including several encyclopedias, Bartlett's Quotations, the Encyclopedia of World History, the Columbia Encyclopedia, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Roget's Thesaurus.
Don't overlook government resources. The CIA's World Factbook (www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/) is a trove of information about the geography, people, government and economy of every country in the world. The Census Bureau's American FactFinder page (factfinder.census.gov) has population, housing, economic and geographical data.
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