System requirements : 486 or higher Windows compatible computer; 4 MB RAM (8 MB recommended); Windows 95 or Windows 3.1 and DOS 5.0 or higher; Double‐speed CD‐ROM drive with MSCDEX 2.2 or higher, SVGA graphics with 256 colors; Windows compatible mouse; Windows‐compatible sound card; speakers or headphones. Hard disk space: 1.004 MB
The “Time Multimedia Almanac” includes all articles from Time Magazine from January, 1989 through December, 1995. But “The Time Magazine Multimedia Almanac,” as its name suggests, is more than just a magazine. It’s also less. There are a number of means to get to the materials; and the designer and programmers did their best to allow users several point‐and‐click options as well as a search engine. Installation is a very clear‐cut process; and the user is guided through with a clear series of choices. The software loaded in a few minutes each time it was installed.
The creators of this interactive CD made the decision to exclude all advertisements; and they have separated text from illustrative materials. Because the structure of the CD is completely changed from that of a traditional magazine, the first few screens give few clues of what to expect inside. It isn’t until one has opened several sections of irrelevant material that one can get a sense of what navigation is like in this mish‐mash of souped‐up news material, now functioning as historical resources.
The opening screen includes a sidebar with navigational, print, mark, note and help icons. One can make bookmarks with the mark icon and use an on‐line notepad for notes using the note icon. The “menu” portion of the opening screen consists of Time cover‐like icons: Environment, Elections, Cyberspace, Diversity, Weekly Issues, Decades, Portfolio, Almanac and NewsQuest (a game). It is not evident to this reviewer what criteria for selection were used to include items in most of the sections, excepting the Weekly Issues and NewsQuest. In the Environment, Elections, Cyberspace and Diversity sections, multimedia content selection seems weirdly arbitrary. The Portfolio section contains video clips, photos, covers, maps and charts of all subjects. The organization of the media in this section seems to be chronological until it comes to the charts, at which time the menu returns to randomness. It appears as though sections were created by different programmers with various design and editorial ideas, making navigation somewhat annoying. Information can be retrieved from these sections only by menu, not by search engine.
The Weekly Issues section provides browsing through a chronological list of all issues on the CD. A mouse click on the issue date provides a list of each article within the issue. Once an individual article is on the screen (no matter how it’s retrieved), some bibliographical description is provided from the original paper publication. The articles lack the page number of the end of the article and specific page breaks, which will make it difficult to cite quotes or make full bibliographic citations for academic papers. Customer service indicated that it is not scheduled for regular updates and the most recent edition is 1995.
Although it seems useful for several types of audiences from middle school through adult, parts of the almanac don’t make sense for each possible audience. The price makes it attractive for personal use, and certainly well within reach for most library collections. When compared with retrieval through major indexing sources, it does deliver more of Time Magazine via its search engine than other retrieval resources such as CARL UnCover, ArticleFirst, and Expanded Academic Index.
The auxiliary “almanac” information does not seem to be systematic and draws from a variety of sources so that each purchaser would have to evaluate its usefulness compared with other possibilities.
The search engine searches the full text but does not use obvious cross referencing. It supports Boolean operators, truncation, expansion of search terms and works quickly. It allows users to key in search strings or select terms from a list. The minimum hardware requirements provide adequate power for quick results; and it provides “advanced” search capabilities as well. Results can be output to disk or printed. The “search” dialog box is simply designed and good help is provided for the less obvious features. There are frequent links to America Online and references to the World Wide Web pages for Time Magazine for further investigation of topics. However, this reviewer did not wish to subscribe to America Online for this review and, consequently, did not investigate the links to the America Online version.
The CD includes all documentation which is clear, accurate, and comprehensive for all the functionality options I researched. When I ran into a video playback problem and garbled some files, friendly, effective telephone support was quickly available, even on Saturday. The customer service personnel answered all questions efficiently and with a good attitude.
To summarize: this inexpensive interactive CD‐ROM serves as the best method to retrieve the most text from Time Magazine when compared to other retrieval methods, due to the full‐text retrieval technique and the extent of the articles available. Libraries considering this resource may find limitations in having the text of a single title to be too much of a disadvantage, when reviewing it in the context of research collection needs. Optional purchase.
