Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 377.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2000 09:32:53 +0000
From: Leo Robert Klein <lk13@is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: 13.0375 CD-ROMs in libraries & Octavo matters
On Fri, 4 Feb 2000,cbf@socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
> CD-ROM disks drive librarians crazy. Large libraris have hundreds if not
> thousands of them. They all have different software and they all must be
> installed. Some can run on networks; some can't. They are _much_ more
> dificult to deal with than printed books for these reasons.
This is particularly true not merely for the relatively benign pdf
format but for the ton of cdroms that came with books using interactive
technology. Already, CD-ROMs authored in Director 4, a common enough
authoring package circa 1995, do not play correctly on modern machines.
I don't really see how libraries will be able to do much since they're
having enough trouble coming to grips with current technology. Also, the
cd-rom itself is an end product--something "compiled" from original
authoring files (a.k.a the assets). Having the cdrom is much like having
a java application already compiled in bytecode--there's not much you can
do with it.
I think in five years we can forget about such titles as the celebrated
cdrom that accompanied "Passage to Vietnam" (1994). The plastic disk will
outlive the content it holds.
LEO
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Baruch College/CUNY Email: leo.klein@nyu.edu
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