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The CD-Rom: Weaknesses

Nick Adams, the editor of this virtual volume, provides an informative commentary on the decision process which produced the final form of the CD; see Editor's Notes on the opening screen.

The sheer scale of the publication (503 closely-packed pages, plus bibliography and tables) made its own demands. For example, it proved too cumbersome to link the thousands of in-text citations directly to the works cited. Instead, links feed into a search for the author's last name, leaving the reader to sort among multiple authors with the same last name and multiple works by a given author.

As noted, images are presented exactly as they appear in the book. It was decided that obtaining new illustrations and maps would be too time-consuming and expensive. Although Adams retouched the scanned images, illustrations which were of poor quality in the original book are not improved in the CD version. Adams concludes, "Sorry, but I wanted to get this done before computers become obsolete." I would respond, "The beauty of the medium is that it can be easily edited and amended. Get better maps and illustrations for the next edition!"

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Last updated: Mon Aug 6 2001