This CD‐ROM contains interlinked data on all countries of the world and allows full‐text searching. The version reviewed is dated May/June 1997. Types of information include country facts and figures; more than 2,000 news stories covering events from recent years; 800 biographies of government officials, political leaders, cultural figures and sports personalities; 1,000 profiles of political parties, businesses, government agencies and other organisations; excerpts and summaries from more than 200 important documents; 1,800 photographs of people, events, buildings, etc.; and a world atlas.
For any country the user can click on the category menu to go to overview, events, facts and figures, biographies, organisations, documents, flag or map. From any particular screen, one can click on highlighted “hotspots” to view a term in the glossary, or follow hyperlinks to related topics. It is possible to enlarge photographs and re‐size maps and flags by clicking on a button or following instructions on the single sheet of tips provided with the CD‐ROM. Material is easily printed or copied into a working file.
On events which have figured prominently in world news there is a wealth of information. On the Bosnian conflict, for example, there are almost 200 stories from the period 2 August 1991‐28 February 1997. These look like screen versions of print journalism, with a dateline and headline at the top, followed by paragraph‐length content. North America receives more detailed attention than elsewhere; the country index includes extensive province or state‐level data for Canada and the USA.
While material on international organisations is extensive, coverage of countries other than the USA tends to be parochial and often misleading. On Australia, for example, the country overview gives three paragraphs of basic information, some of which reads rather strangely (“The Labor Party has steadily dominated the pro‐business Liberal‐National coalition ...”); events provide 17 options such as economic affairs, politics and, strangely, “World War II Aftermath” (on the war crime hearings in Adelaide in 1992); there are 14 sets of facts and figures; a section on history includes many hyperlinks; a very select set of biographies covers politicians Beazley, Evans, Hawke, Howard, Howe, Keating, Ray and Willis; two documents are reproduced (the 1901 Constitution and the ANZUS Treaty); there is a reproduction of the flag and a map. Only six Australian organisations are selected for coverage (the two main political parties, Federal Parliament, High Court, Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Australian Council of Trade Unions); and there is little or nothing on Wik, Hanson, the “lost children” and other current topics.
This is an easily accessible source for contemporary world history and current events from a US perspective (e.g. only 18 Britons are accorded biographical entries, and choice of biographees is idiosyncratic at the very least). Without details on price and updating arrangements, it is difficult to judge whether this CD would represent good value for libraries in Asia and the Pacific ‐ it is certainly not adequate from an Australian perspective.
