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.īritannica (charges $59.95 a year for access to its online version Microsoft offers access to its full online version, Encarta Online Deluxe (available at only to those who buy the CD or DVD version. Whether that matters depends on the project and the person using the 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. or cable, it might be faster to use a Web version of an encyclopedia than to find and insert a CD or DVD. If you have a broadband connection like D.S.L. If not, you will need to load the CD's or DVD each time.
If you bought a PC recently, you probably have enough space on your hard drive. That takes up a whopping 2.5 gigabytes but saves you the time and trouble of inserting the CD's or DVD each time you need access. Better yet, both products give you the option of installing the program and all the data on your PC's hard drive.
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. Both have plenty of video, audio and pictures as well as homework helper tools. 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. You also get two Merriam-Webster dictionaries, two thesauruses, an atlas and thousands of images, animations and videos. 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.
There are even ways for library patrons and students to get free access to some of the fee-based services.ĬD-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. Some Internet sites charge a monthly or annual fee, but others are free. 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. 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. Their wares often became a fixture of family rooms, growing old, dusty and woefully out of date. 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.