DISCovering Nations, States, & Cultures is another in the DISCovering series of products published by Gale Research. The user is provided with a CD‐ROM, a help card, a user’s manual of approximately 50 pages, and a 63 page teacher’s manual. The product itself pairs current geographical, factual, and statistical information on over 200 nations, 53 US states and territories, and 12 Canadian provinces, along with cultural and daily life data on approximately 500 of the world’s most studied cultural groups. It also includes over 400 world, regional, and national maps; over 30 primary documents; and approximately 500 images. Cross‐national and cross‐cultural comparisons allow users to see a world of similarities and differences and invoke spatial thinking. Official flags, seals, and maps of the nations are also included. The aim of the product is to provide the user with a complete picture of the nations of the world and its peoples.
There are detailed instructions for setting up and loading the product, all of which are easy to follow. The user’s manual is an excellent reference source for the user to access and fully explains options and search procedures to maximize the product’s effectiveness. The main menu screen allows the user to do a keyword search (What Do You Want to Know?), as well as search by Cultures, by Place, by Full Text, or by Picture Gallery. The tool bar along the top of the screen allows the user to accomplish common Windows functions like printing, saving, and copying, as well as begin new searches, search a dictionary or glossary, or ask for help.
A context bar with a list of general subject categories is located at the bottom of the Place and Cultures areas, with subjects such as clothing, education, food, holidays, language, living conditions, religion, social problems, and work. Media elements such as flags, seals, maps, and photo images are available for all countries and states. Text from the product can be highlighted and marked for printing, copying, saving, or downloading. Navigation and search strategies are also provided in the user’s manual. The teacher’s manual is an excellent resource and an added bonus for this product, which indicates that the publisher is focusing efforts on distribution to educational groups at junior high through college levels.
This product is an excellent addition to classes in the social sciences, especially geography, history, sociology, government, economics, anthropology, and world cultures. It is a particularly useful tool for the study of contemporary politics and events in any of those subject areas. With the current conflict in Kosovo and the breakdown within nations and cultures recently owing to ethnic and political differences, this product provides not only descriptions of differing nations and cultures, but the historical, political, social, and economic roots of conflicts.
Comparisons between nations, states, and cultures can be accomplished via geographical comparisons such as location, topography, climate, flora and fauna, environment, population, and migration; political comparisons such as government, political parties, local government, judicial system, armed forces, international cooperation, and dependencies; economic comparisons such as economy, income, labor, mining, industry, trade, balance of payments, economic development, and public finance; social comparisons such as social development, health, housing, and education; cultural comparisons such as media, tourism, libraries, and museums; and cultural comparisons such as language, folklore, religion, holidays, rites of passage, family life, clothing, food, sports, social problems, cultural heritage, and living conditions. It is a one‐stop product for complete information on all the nations, states, and cultures of the modern world, and does a thorough job of providing the appropriate search and comparison mechanisms needed to make the product useful in the educational environment.
