Daily Life through History offers text and images about daily life at various points in history. In addition to the CD version, this product is also available on the Web and in print form. (This review focuses on the CD version and briefly discusses the Web version.)
The content of this product focuses mostly on the Americas and England. The ten areas covered are Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Greeks, The Aztecs, Inca Empire, Maya Civilization, Chaucer’s England, Elizabethan England, Civil War America, Nineteenth Century American Frontier and Victorian England. Each area has its own chapter; Chapter 1 is about daily life in Mesopotamia, Chapter 2 is about the Ancient Greeks, etc. An interesting array of information can be found, including, for instance, descriptions of ceremonies, how a household is set up, and what a woman’s role is. Though it would be nice to have a wider range of cultures discussed, the content is informative and detailed for those areas that are covered.
The Daily Life through History CD comprises the text and the software, which is a program called Folio Views. Installation of these components is very easy and straightforward as it uses the common Windows installation wizard. Three installation options are available. Typical installs only the program files onto the local hard drive, leaving the text on the CD‐ROM. Network installs both the program and the text on to a network drive, which allows for installation on other networked computers. (Use of this option depends on whether a networking license is purchased.) Finally, the hard disk option installs all the files on to the hard drive.
When users start the program, they will notice a row of buttons at the top of the screen offering shortcuts to various functions, such as printing. Below this row of buttons is a series of tabs (like file folder tabs) that provide access to different “views” or screen layouts. Most of these layouts include a pane for the text and at least one pane that has a table of contents or an indented location list. These are very helpful because the content of the CD is actually one long text document. This means that it is very easy to scroll past “Chaucer’s England” and into the middle of “Elizabethan England” without really realizing it. The table of contents can help eliminate confusion and make navigation a bit easier.
As a whole, each of the views is relatively easy to figure out and use. The search view, however, can cause some initial confusion. This view breaks the screen into three sections: the top provides an indented list that shows where in the text the cursor is located, the middle shows the actual content, and the bottom shows the results list of any searches. What is most confusing about this is users cannot actually run a search from this screen. To actually do a search, there are two options. Users can go to the search menu and select Query, Advanced query, one of the individual chapters or images. In addition, there are a series of shortcut buttons at the top of the screen for each of these options.
The searching functions seem straightforward and effective. Every word in the text is indexed, and users can search for individual words, for phrases and for words in proximity to other words. Standard Boolean functions (“and, or, not”) are available as well as exclusive or, wildcards, proximity searching and synonyms. Many of these functions use common syntax. Phrases, for instance, use quotations around the phrase words and wildcards use the asterisk (*) for multiple characters and the question mark (?) for single characters. However, the syntax for other functions is not very obvious. To search for synonyms, as an example, the search term is followed by a dollar sign ($): imagine$. While the help documentation does describe and provide examples on how to use each of these functions, it is not apparent from the search screens that they even exist. Overall, however, the search functions are a strong feature of this product because of the variety of tools and functions offered.
In general, navigation is the biggest area of potential confusion with this product, especially the first time it is used. It is very easy at first to start using the scrollbar to move around or to get stuck figuring out how to do searches. Reading the help documentation is the best way to become quickly oriented with navigating and is also helpful for learning searching syntax.
In comparison to the CD, the Web version of this product has exactly the same content. The only difference lies in the interface. Instead of one long text document, the content is broken up into various pieces. There are navigation buttons (back and next) and directional links on the bottom of the screen. The top part of the screen has links to the main page and a table of contents. It is important to note that the back and forward buttons of an Internet browser do not work properly with this product. These buttons can jump users right out of the resource altogether. So, it is important to use the actual back and next buttons on the pages in order to navigate. There is a help document on the main page that explains these navigation quirks.
Also, the search functions in the Web version are much easier to use. There is only one search page with a very simple layout. Word and phrase searches are separated from image searching, but both types of searches are very clearly described. The only drawback here is that it is not clear whether there are as many search options, like wildcards and proximity searching, available with this interface. With this in mind, the CD version has a stronger, more flexible searching capability, but it is not as easy to use.
Overall, the content provided by Daily Life through History is terrific and not quite matched in any other resource. This alone makes all versions of the product worth investigating. The content would be especially useful for high school and college‐level students. The question of which format to purchase really depends on individual situations, especially given that both the Web and CD versions are available for similar prices. It would be advisable to experiment with both if possible before choosing. In sum, I would highly recommend this product keeping format issues in mind.
