Like others in the series, serves as a starting point for young (high school or junior college) researchers and their instructors. Background chapters are followed by sections giving a chronology of important issues and events; summaries of laws and regulations connected with water quality, irrigation, public works, ocean pollution, and other aspects of supply and pollution; a directory of organizations; a thoroughly annotated and classified bibliography, which takes up almost half the book and is its core; and a listing, with brief descriptions, of films, filmstrips, and videocassettes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Written out of concern for the environment, this title in the Contemporary World Issues series deals with a variety of topics relating to water, which, according to the authors, is our most fundamental resource. References are made to international organizations and problems, but the focus of the book is the U.S. water supply and its preservation. The book is divided into six sections. The first part deals with the history of water use and contamination in the U.S., and the second contains chronologies of several aspects of water use and abuse. Part 3 describes laws and regulations, part 4 lists national and international organizations that deal with water issues, part 5 is an extensive annotated bibliography, and part 6 is an annotated mediagraphy. The last three sections will be most helpful to readers looking for detailed information on the topic
A glossary and short appendix containing four pertinent maps are included. Information in the text is made accessible by the use of guide phrases at the top of each page. The index does not add to the book's usefulness as a research tool because it contains mostly authors and titles found in the bibliography. Searching for a topic in the index will not yield much more information than skimming the text
The handbook's greatest value is to the informed user who is looking for an organization or additional material on a water-related issue. The best place for this volume would be in a public library or in the private library of an environmental activist, to be used as a quick-reference source.
Originally released in late 1991, the current version of "Magazine Article Summaries Full Text Elite on CD-ROM" (version 3.41) provides keyword and subject-heading access to abstracts of articles from 382 general-interest periodicals. This product includes the full text of 90 of these magazines, as well as text from "Magill Book Reviews". The indexed journals were selected as the most popular in high schools and public libraries, based on subscriber surveys, and range from "House Beautiful" to "Ebony" and from "Scientific American" to "Bon Appetit". Also covered are the "New York Times" and some academic journals such as "American Political Science Review" and "Journal of the American Medical Association". Among the 90 magazines available full text are the three major news weeklies plus such titles as "Prevention", "FDA Consumer", "Forbes", "Runner's World", "Money", "Popular Photography", "Sports Illustrated", "Rolling Stone", and "Harvard Health Letter"
A subscription consists of a current disc with the most recent 18 months of covered articles and a disc with older data. The list of included magazines indicates the dates coverage began for each title. For some, the back file begins with 1984, while other titles were added to the database since then. Subscription options are available for updates monthly, quarterly, or on an academic-year basis. Also, another version of the database is available that provides full text for 60 titles, rather than the 90 included in the elite version reviewed here
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE. Hardware requirements do not include anything unusual--PC XT/AT or compatible; 640K RAM (2 MB recommended); floppy-disk drive; 10 MB hard disk; and a CD-ROM player. The software requires MS DOS 3.3 or higher and Microsoft CD-ROM Extensions 2.1 or higher
SEARCHING AND DISPLAYING. To check on the currency of the database, I used "Clinton" as a search term. In the November 1992 disc, I found the most recent articles were dated October 19, 1992. This is reasonable updating for a CD-ROM product. The results of a search are displayed in a hit-list format, with the parts of the citation clearly labeled as "subject", "title", and "source". The list indicates if full text is available, which is accessed by pressing the F7 key. If a local library has input its journals-holding list, a note indicating the article is available in hard copy is also displayed. The user can move the cursor down to a particular citation in the list and press ENTER to see an abstract. Adding highlighting to the location of the cursor would improve the user interface a bit
The appearance of the initial search screen is clean and intuitive, with a simple "Query Profile" that asks the user to type up to three lines of terms. These lines are labeled FIND [A] AND [B] AND [C] for a Boolean search. Entering terms in this part of the screen searches only the citation fields (abstract, title, source, and subject heading). Entering text in three more lines lower down on the screen will cause a search in the full-text portion of the database, as well as in the citation information. For simple, one-term searches, particularly when a term is relatively new, the full-text approach probably will yield better results. For example, I did a search on "nanotechnology" and found 16 hits in the citation portion and a total of 21 hits when the full-text fields were included
A number of ways are available to access the information in this database. Besides single subject or keywords, one can search multiword terms in proximity to each other, with the user controlling the distance between terms. The searcher can also use right-hand multicharacter or internal single-character truncation. The context-sensitive help screens are clear and easily followed
INSTALLATION. Simple installation consists of typing the CD-ROM drive letter and the word "install". My only objection to the process is that after installation finishes, one is informed that modifications have been made to the system files, and the computer must be rebooted to use the program. On principle, I do not think it is good programming practice to automatically modify the AUTOEXEC.BAT and/or CONFIG.SYS files without offering the user an option to do this manually. In this case, the only change is to increase the FILES= parameter in the CONFIG.SYS file, so no harm is done. However, some problems can be caused by install programs that take this approach
OTHER FEATURES. After installation, a rather simpleminded security system allows the librarian access to administrative functions. Any library would be well advised to take the further step of adding a password to this process. Once logged on at an administrative level, staff can customize such things as maximum print size, prevent exit to DOS, lock the CD-ROM drive, and choose colors for the display. A nice feature of the product is that it provides statistics on system use, such as average queries per search, average hits per query, and number of queries performed
SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION. Technical support personnel were knowledgable when I called about several problems encountered. All these problems, by the way, stemmed from inaccuracies in the otherwise well written manuals furnished with the program. According to EBSCO personnel, they are in the process of sending revised manuals to users
CONCLUSION. All in all, this is an extremely well designed product that is easy to use and that provides coverage of the most popular magazine titles in high school and public libraries, as well as in some collections serving beginning college students. In these markets, "Magazine Article Summaries" provides serious competition for versions of CD-ROM periodical indexes from Information Access, WilsonLine, and University Microfilms.
