Publisher's Synopsis
The production of CD-ROMs continues apace. As the market burgeons, it becomes more important to question the worth and usefulness of many of these new products. The variety of form and content indicates that publication on disc has now reached every sector. This second volume of CD-ROM Information Products acts as a complementary reference source to Volume 1 and contains detailed evaluations of 22 CD-ROM products. As in Volume 1 these products were selected as being a cross-section of subjects (general science, demography, business), and a cross-section of types (bibliographic, citation index, directory) from both sides of the Atlantic.;Not only do the evaluations give in-depth information to someone contemplating buying a particular product, but they provide models for general evaluation techniques, indicate the facilities typically available on CD-ROMs and provide an awareness of possible shortcomings. Each review deals with the same review criteria in the same order and begins with a double-page "fact sheet". The directory section, seen to be a valuable back-up to the evaluations, contains a list of some 1200 CD-ROM products arranged by broad subject groupings. Each entry provides the names of distributors and producers, the database type, a price code, a brief product description and an Apple Macintosh/IBM PC compatability indication. Products which have been announced but are not yet available are flagged as such and those CD-ROMs which have reviews in this series are also marked.;Each CD-ROM entry is allocated a running number for identification in the indexes. Where a database is available as more than one product - from different suppliers - each version is separately listed. The Directory is followed by the addresses of all companies (publishers, producers and suppliers) named in the entries. The directory is supplied with three indexes.;The General Index lists subjects and database types in one alphabetical sequence. The subjects indexed are somewhat more detailed than the subject headings used for the arrangement of the Directory (for example, Medicine is a subject heading, but an index entry will also be found under Pharmaceutical). The Directory Title Index or product index lists CD-ROMs by title, and as in the Evaluation Index, includes variant title names.;Finally, a Company Index lists all the publishers, producers and distributors; it should be noted that the General and Company Indexes may provide several references to what turns out to be the same title because some titles have been allocated to more than one subject heading and have therefore been given more than one identification number.
