Reviews of Perseus, arranged in reverse chronological order:
Thompson, Tom. Ode to a Grecian disc. (Yale University Press’s Perseus 2.0 interactive educational CD‐ROM) Byte 22 (2): 38 (February,1997).
Collins, Boyd R. Web Watch ‐ The Perseus Project: An Evolving Digital Library on Ancient Greece. Library Journal 121 (4): 31 (March 1, 1996).
Marchionini, Gary and Crane, Gregory. Evaluating hypermedia and learning: methods and results from the Perseus Project. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 121 (1): 5‐35 (January 1994).
Hamel‐Schwulst, M. Perseus 1.0 (CD‐ROM). Choice 30 (11):1758 (July August, 1993).
Samberg, Mark . Perseus 1.0. (Yale University Press’ Perseus 1.0: Interactive Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece CD‐ROM database) Computers and the Humanities 27 (5‐6): 409‐415 (October‐December, 1993).
Background on Perseus and its Impact on Education, arranged in reverse chronological order:
Hughes, Joan. The Perseus Project: Implications for Learning and Teaching. East Lansing, MI: Current Applications in Educational Technology, Michigan State University, December 12, 1995. Available online at: http://www.educ.msu.edu/homepages/HUGHESJO/perseus.project.html. Site visited 5 May, 1997.
Anderson, Kristina L. The Perseus Project: An Evolving Digital Library on Ancient Greece. College & Research Libraries News 57 (b): 529 (September 1966).
Coleman, Mark. Hypertext in the humanities classroom. (Technology and Higher Education) Education 113 (3):392‐399 (Spring, 1993).
Neuman, Delia. Evaluating Evolution: Naturalistic Inquiry and the Perseus Project. Computers and the Humanities 25 (4):239‐46 (August, 1991).
Mylonas, Elli. An Interface to Classical Greek Civilization. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 43 (2): 192‐201 (March, 1992).
Mangan, Katherine S. ‘Perseus’ helps students see links between aspects of ancient Greece. (information on ancient Greece stored in CD‐ROMs and videodiscs). The Chronicle of Higher Education 38 (4): A26 (September 18, 1991).
Harward, V. Judson. From Museum to Monitor: The Visual Exploration of the Ancient World. Academic Computing 2 (7):16‐19,69‐71 (May‐Jun 1988).
Crane, Gregory, and Harward, V. Judson.
Perseus Project: Interactive Teaching and Research Tools for Ancient Greek Civilization. Scope: Humanities Computing Update 5 (6): 68 (November‐December 1987).
This multimedia package for the Macintosh includes a CD‐ROM disc and a 257 page “User’s Guide” which covers both the Concise and Comprehensive editions. (See below for detail on the differences). Hardware and system software requirements include Mac LC family through PowerPC family and System 7.0 or higher. The program will run with a minimum 68020 microprocessor, at least 5 MB allotted for the Perseus Player, 8‐bit color monitor, CD‐ROM player and 7 MB of hard disk space. While these are minimums, the system optimally operates on a Mac Centris, Quadra or PowerPC with 68040 microprocessor, 7 MB of hard disk space, 8‐20 MB for Player, 24‐bit color, and 17‐inch monitor.
While Perseus 2.0 is currently only available for the Macintosh, a Windows version is under development. The Web site provides the information about Perseus and its use. (URL: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/) A May 5 Web search using the Alta Vista search engine turned up over one hundred institutional sites about Perseus and its use on respective campuses. One of the best is at Michigan State University. (URL: http://www.educ.msu.edu/homepages/HUGHESJO/perseus.project.html. These sites also link to other classical sites on the Web that provide content beyond and supplementary to Perseus.
Perseus 2.0 for the Macintosh comes in two versions: the Concise Edition on one CD which is under review here, and the Comprehensive Edition on four CDS. The Concise Edition corresponds to Disk 1 of the Comprehensive set and “contains all texts, tools, utilities and thumbnail images” of the Comprehensive Edition. What the Concise edition lacks is the complete file of full size images of the vases, sculpture, architecture, and aerial site photographs from Disks 2‐4.
The standard installation was performed on both a Power Mac 7100/66 and a Performa 6116CD with no difficulties. This standard installation consumes 6 MB of disk space. It is possible to install additional segments of the hypertext stacks but this requires large amounts of disk storage.
Perseus is a set of hyperlinked databases of texts, maps, and photographs which present a comprehensive view.
The Concise Edition includes all pictures linked to the Historical Overview, to the Encyclopedia, to the Essays, to vases from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts catalog, and more than nine hundred site or architecture images, plus 3,600 sculpture images. Together there are 6,100 full‐screen images. (As opposed to 25,000 in the Comprehensive Edition.)
Both editions are organized under six rubrics: Historical Overview, Essays & Catalogs, Atlas, Tools and Reference, Art & Archaeology, and Primary Texts.
The Historical Overview is an encyclopedia‐like discussion of Greek history with many links to other databases of art, maps and related text. The “Essays and Catalogs” section provides brief descriptions of vases, music, regions of the Iberian peninsula and nearby locations, text of vase and sculptor catalogs, and short biographical sketches of prominent persons of Ancient Greece. All of these texts are supported by a vast array of graphical material which is linked; so they are a button click and a few brief seconds away. (With the standard installation most of the content must be retrieved from the CD. While there is a noticeable pause for retrieval, the length of time is not a major problem.)
Tools and Reference includes various indexes that allow word searches of the databases and a bibliography of the sources used to compile Perseus. The Atlas section includes a series of maps of the ancient Greek Mediterranean. These series provide a range of scales and coverage with black and white outline maps, satellite photographs, and color shaded relief. Use of the Atlas section is greatly facilitated by a graphical index and easy‐to‐use zoom and scan utilities. A zoom utility allows a change in scale while a scan utility allows movement of the map image on the screen as desired by the user.
The Art & Archaeology section provides a variety of index paths to access the vast library of thumbnail photographs of vases and other artifacts of classical Greek culture as well as the architecture renderings of important buildings and sites of Ancient Greece. This is the place where the Concise edition of Perseus is the most noticeably less effective than the Comprehensive Edition. Since most of the full screen photographs are on disks 2‐4 they are not available in the Concise edition. The Concise Edition whets the user’s appetite by showing the thumbnail sketches but can’t deliver the goods.
There are texts in Greek and English of thirty‐one Greek writers including, for example, Aeschines, Aristotle, Dinarchus, Hesiod, Lysias, Plato, and Zenophon, displayed in parallel.
In addition to the extensive text and graphic content and the conventional indexes, Perseus exploits its hypertext nature. Extensive links exist among the parts so that, for example, a user can move from the mention of a personal or place name in the text to additional text or graphics about the person or place. The thousands of links allow one to move in a variety of directions at will among the texts, atlas, and graphical images of all types.
This feature, despite all its advantages, has a distinct disadvantage. Unless the user has a purpose or goal, use of Perseus is episodic and undisciplined.
The user can miss the major themes and ideas. To overcome this weakness the creators of Perseus have designed a “Paths” utility. This feature allows the user to create a saved file of steps through the extensive content. This feature allows teachers to create assigned “readings” in Perseus, or users to save a series of steps for review. In addition to creating the Paths utility, the producers have created some standard paths which users can modify and/or expand. But in the postmodern spirit of hypertext design, users can break out of a path and go their own way, with return to the path, wherever they left it, only a mouse click away.
The variety of approaches to linking the content make Perseus an effective interactive teaching tool. This reviewer can easily imagine how a student with a few choice questions could get fully engaged in an exploratory journey through maps, texts, and graphics. The links function much as jumping from page to page on Web sites but with the assurance of high quality information content which has been carefully selected to mutually enhance the value of each part.
Perseus 2.0 has some significant differences from the earlier 1.0 version. These include a completely rebuilt atlas, an expanded number of vase images and new essays on Greek vases. In addition to the expanded content there are new software features: contextual help utility, search tools for art and archaeology, Browser and Lookup features for easier access to the databases, a utility for saving search operations and more powerful retrieval and display software for the Greek and English parallel texts.
Much of the use of Perseus does not require the print manuals. The program navigational devices are well presented; and, after learning the meaning of a few icons, the student can use the system effectively. Nevertheless the two‐hundred and fifty‐seven page manual is very useful in exploiting the content fully. Faculty who assign students to use Perseus should read the manual carefully in designing assignments. The manual is a model of clarity and good organization.
Perseus was one of the first multi media digital information resources and it remains one of the most widely used. The initial development of Perseus was sponsored by the Annenberg/CPB Projects with additional funding from the Getty Grant Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Science Foundation. For more background on the development of Perseus and its wide implementation see the bibliography at the beginning of this review or the Web site at Tufts University.
Perseus is probably the preeminent example of the multimedia program based on hypertext format. Since 1987, the tool has developed into a premiere product that represents what is the best in a quality multimedia program. This Concise Edition will allow teachers to investigate the use of Perseus without investing in the more costly ($350) Comprehensive Edition. The publisher provides for upgrading from the Concise to the Comprehensive Edition. Therefore users can “risk” the relatively low cost of the Concise Edition, without “throwing away” that expense when upgrading. The Concise Edition might meet the teacher’s needs sufficiently. In either case the Concise Edition provides a low cost way to explore this multi‐media instructional resource.
I recommend a careful study of the Web version of Perseus (which is free) and the content of the two CD versions (see http://www.yale.edu/yup/Perseus2.html for detailed descriptions) before deciding which to use/purchase initially.
