#Encyclopedias?
8 messages in this thread
I must have phrased it badly. I, too, have the 10 year old paper edition,
and the STW (grolier's) on CD. And as far as copying goes (somewhere
further down this thread) – wouldn't the hard disks required to copy the
CDROM be more expensive than the CDROM itself? I just don't buy that as a
reason not to put the Brittanica on CD. And as far as prestige goes – the
OED is out on CD, and you don't _get_ any more prestigous than that!
There is 1 Reply.
Tim:
I hate to admit my ignorance here but what is OED. I know when you tell me
I will probably say I knew that but I sure can not think of anyting now.
<G>
I do not know why anyone would want to copy an encyclopedia to a hard drive
as even if you did you still would not have the Boolian searching
cabability. You are also correct it would be more expensive and slower as
well.
The thing about CDs is that they only cost about $5.00 to press once the
master is made. However, because everyone knows that, people are not
willing to pay $700.00 to 1200.00 for a encyclopedia on CD they feel that
they are getting ripped off and they would be. Probably half the cost of
the EB is the cost of binding it. Each volume has well over 1000 pages and
each is well bound. It has to be to hold up. Then they have to print the
thing and it is printed on very thin paper which must be a real mess to
work with. There would be none of that with the CD and I have been told
that you could put the EB on a CD three times and still have room for the
every word index.
It may be that they do not want to bring the price down to where everyone
could afford it shich they could if they put it out on CD.
However I do not know why they don't I was not the one who suggested that
it would lower their prestege.
R
There are 2 Replies.
Roger,
OED = Oxford English Dictionary.
By the way, if you copy a CD to hard disk, searching will be faster, not
slower. A high capacity hard disk has an average access time of about
16ms, whereas the fastest CD-ROM drives only have an average access time of
300ms.
Frank
There is 1 Reply.
Frank,
We've been having good luck with speed by just copying the index of
the disk we published to a hard disk. The searches are done in the index,
so you don't actually hit the CD until you want to look at one of the hits,
and then the speed isn't as important. Is this possible with other CDs?
Lisa Richards
There is 1 Reply.
Lisa,
It may be possible with other CD's but what is even more important is is it
legal? Before you start copying CD-ROM products down to hard disk, you
should check with the publisher that you are not violating the license
agreement.
Frank
There is 1 Reply.
Frank,
Since we publish the disk, I don't worry about licensing problems
<g> and recommend it to our customers so that they can get the most speed
possible if they have the disk room. Keeps the customers happy … they
tell two friends, who tell two friends, pretty soon my little state will be
saturated with happy customers.
Lisa
There is 1 Reply.
The Encyl. publishers are not so worried that you will copy the entire CD
onto a hard disk, as you will copy entire articles, etc. SOme of the
current CD versions let you save to disk/printer in limited amounts. THus
you arent as likely to plagerize <sp> an article.
and it is entirely possible to copy the data & search engine to disk. Thats
how we build these beast to begin with. A decent 600MB scsi drive can be
had for about $1000 if you know where to look. Next year there will be 1G
scsi2 drives out for about $1500. thats enough to hold 20 FULL cd's. most
titles barely use 1/2 the 500+Mb available. (grolier's is only about 300Mb,
mostly for the images and sound!!)
-jerry