McGraw‐Hill Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science & Technology

Citation

Oberhelman, D.D. (1999), "McGraw‐Hill Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science & Technology", OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 53-54. https://doi.org/10.1108/oclc.1999.15.1.53.1

The McGraw‐Hill Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science & Technology corresponds to the 20‐volume McGraw‐Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 8th ed. and the McGraw‐Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, 5th ed. It includes over 7,100 articles and more than 122,000 definitions. It also includes biographical sketches for more than 250 important people in the history of science and engineering, as well as curriculum outlines with appropriate articles for student instruction in six disciplines: biology, chemistry, engineering, earth sciences, health sciences, and physics.

Multimedia elements comprise 58 animations; almost 1,400 color illustrations, photographs, charts, and tables, which include 30 topographic maps and 45 sky maps; and crystalline animations for most chemical elements. Most of the images, including the formulae and 142 photographs, are in GIF format; but there are also many images in BMP format. The first version of the encyclopedia has garnered high praise for its graphics. The astronomical photos are particularly striking. Unfortunately, the CD contains only a relatively small number of the images contained in the print version. This is not to say that the disc is deficient. Rather, it is full to capacity; and the editors had to choose which images to exclude to keep the title to a single disc.

There are two general ways to explore the McGraw‐Hill Multimedia Encyclopedia:browsing and searching. One browses the contents by clicking the down‐arrow button to the right of the Contents box on the toolbar and selecting the resource to browse (encyclopedia, dictionary, biographies, or study guides) and typing a topic of interest in the Find box or using the scroll bar to move to the desired topic.

The encyclopedia has a very strong search engine that will locate specific terms, phrases, or groups of terms and phrases quickly and easily. Phrases like black hole, internal combustion engine, and high‐definition television, need not be included in quotation marks or any other marks to distinguish them from single‐word terms. The engine will support up to four terms connected with the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. The engine will search the full text of the encyclopedia; but researchers can opt to limit the search to article titles only. They can also indicate the relationship between the terms ‐ up to 50 words apart.

While the search engine defaults to searching the CD, researchers can opt to search the Web also. The program will let them select Excite, Lycos, or Infoseek as their preferred search engine. If that is not enough, researchers can focus a search on one or more of the ten subjects covered by the encyclopedia: agriculture/ forestry, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, engineering, mathematics, medicine/psychology, or physics. Topic filters permit browsing any of 20 major topic areas (and nearly 100 subtopics) in the encyclopedia.

Results display in a large, easily legible typeface; and users can enlarge or reduce the size as desired or quickly return to the original size with a single click. Researchers can have the results sorted alphabetically (default) or by relevance. Links open new windows. Users can tile them or cascade them. They can easily forget how many they have open. There is no back button to return to a departure point. The assumption is that one will close the window. Users can close individual windows at will to conserve RAM; but there is a button on the tool bar to close them all with one click. Some of the icons are not intuitive, nor are they sensitive to mouse movement where they would give a pop‐up explanation.

A search for “discrete cosine transform” produced two articles but neither had a detailed description. None of the articles on the turbine or specific turbines (gas, hydraulic, steam, etc.) contained any illustrations to show how a turbine worked. Although the article on nuclear reaction contained no illustrations, it had a detailed animation of a chain reaction. As mentioned earlier, the print edition of the Encyclopedia has many more illustrations than the CD. For example, the article on the motor has 13 figures in the print edition but none on the CD. The article on Neptune has no illustrations on the CD while the book has several figures and color plates. The CD article on the moon lacked the 19 figures and four tables from the print; but it included an animation and excellent explanation of the moon’s orbit.

Researchers can easily view any illustrations, maps, or other graphics associated with an article. There is no media gallery; but many of the images would not make much sense viewed out of context of the article. Researchers can print articles, copy portions to the Windows clipboard, bookmark them for quick reference later, view associated multimedia features (where available), look for a particular word or phrase within the article, or look up a word in the dictionary. Copying works fine for the text; but formulae will usually appear garbled and exponents and subscripts will display on the same line as real numbers.

The text is authoritative and well written. In fact, the McGraw‐Hill Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science & Technology has become, or should be, the point of departure to begin research on a scientific or technological topic. It is not likely that any library other than those specializing in science and technology will need both the print and the CD versions. If one needs the plethora of illustrations that the print version contains, then the CD will not suffice. If the text is the primary concern, the CD is an excellent purchase. The search engine is fast and powerful. It makes searching the encyclopedia and other associated resources much faster than locating the same information in print.