Twayne’s United States Authors on CD‐ROM is an expanded and updated version of DiscLit. This new edition contains approximately 200 titles from the Twayne’s US.
Authors Series. The print version consists of more than 700 volumes in a numbered series, many of which have gone out of print. Most of the corresponding volumes on the CD do not indicate volume numbers; but they cover the most important authors and include many of the more recently published print works. The CD also includes many revised editions. Other titles in the CD‐ROM series include Twayne’s English Authors and Twayne’s World Authors.
Twayne’s United States Authors on CD‐ROM presents critical work by scholars on the authors and their work. Each title on the disc contains a chronology of key events in the author’s life, bibliographies of the author’s primary and secondary works, and a reference bibliography. The table of contents screen for each author has links to go directly to a section or topic of interest. Even the author pictures on the main screen have active links to the appropriate books. The main screen also has a Citation button that shows how to cite the work in a bibliography.
The product uses the Netscape browser as the user interface. This facilitates use as it minimizes the learning curve. The first search option on the main menu is for an In Depth Search which uses the following search criteria: Author Name, Genre, Sex, Key Words, and Time Period. The Genre and Time Period options include drop‐down menus for easy selection. Genre includes children’s literature, drama, essay/criticism, letters, memoirs/autobiography, non‐fiction, novels, philosophy, poetry, and stories. Time Period includes options for 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century and post World War II.
Students can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT as well as wildcards. Boolean operators only search chapters and tables of contents. Wildcards can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Wildcard and Key Word searches operate on the complete text. Students can also search for phrases by including them in single quotation marks. Including them in double quotation marks, as in other search engines, executes a Boolean AND search which is the default operator.
Students interested in a particular author can select Authors A‐Z to view the complete list of authors to make a selection and move among chapters, jump to a timeline, or review the bibliographies for a particular book.
The Research Ideas screen lists ten “curriculum‐related topics,” that generally group authors by time periods or activities, such as poets or children’s writers, or other topic such as women or Afro‐American authors. This feature may help generate ideas for search terms and research topics; but it can hardly be considered a tool to spur evaluation and critical thinking.
New additions to this CD‐ROM include color‐coded screens, screen‐sensitive help, and citation information. The citation information for a specific work appears at the beginning and end of every article. End notes are linked so one can go from the reference to the note and back again with a single click. With the Netscape browser, researchers can turn the navigation, location, or personal toolbars off to expand the text window, as desired. A Guide button helps identify interesting places on the Internet while a Search button permits searching the Internet for more specific information.
The Twayne’s Authors Series do not include bookmarks or highlighting features; but they do include a unique ClipPrint utility that allows copying, saving, and printing selected text. ClipPrint launches automatically when the program begins. It operates much like the Windows Clipboard; but, unlike Clipboard which overwrites any content when a new copy operation is executed, ClipPrint adds the text below the previous selection. This means that the student only needs to print at the end of a research session. One can select the “Always on Top” setting for faster access; but this may obstruct viewing of the underlying text.
Students will find Twayne’s United States Authors on CD‐ROM a valuable resource for term papers. The print editions are in frequent demand in most libraries. Even those libraries that have a pretty complete collection of this series may be missing some of the revised volumes or some of them may be marked up or mutilated. Having this collection in electronic form makes all the volumes easily accessible. The powerful search engine retrieves information quickly and easily; and the links with the Internet expand the product’s capabilities immeasurably. This title belongs in every library that supports research in American authors and literature.
