PC Magazine -- December 16, 1997

IBM: World Book 1998 Multimedia Encyclopedia

Geared toward high school and undergraduate students, IBM's revamped World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia has the cleanest, most readable, and most navigable user interface of this year's lineup. World Book comes in two-disk deluxe and single-disk standard  variants and (in keeping with its pedagogical focus) is both teacher- and parent-friendly.

The new interface includes a full-page main menu that distinguishes between browsing and searching functions. Large icons are arrayed across the top of encyclopedia pages. A guide pops up as your mouse glides over an icon, making it easy for even the youngest explorers to find their way through the encyclopedia. And a large-font black-on-ecru text presentation invites on-screen reading.

Long articles come with bibliographies that are broken out by reading level; you'll also find suggested study questions designed to help students get the most out of the information presented. Clicking on the "Webliner" button takes educators to a World Book Web site that offers research and curriculum support. The names of other relevant Web sites appear as links alongside the article text when the user clicks on the 'Related Info: Online' button.

A new set of Homework Wizards assists students in assembling World Book material into reports. The Report Wizard guides you through all phases of the reporting process, from selecting a topic and creating a schedule to outlining, writing, revising, and adding finishing touches. Additional wizards offer a rudimentary charting module and a time-line tool. The former allows users to build their own charts from encyclopedia data rather than merely copying over World Book charts, while the latter encourages users to discover for themselves which events are worthy of timelines.

World Book has a section called Our Century, which allows you to read articles from previous World Book editions (via the Web) dating back to the encyclopedia's 1992 debut. Enterprising investigators can get a sense of how the century's various traumas and triumphs appeared from chronologically close vantage points, just as if they were reading contemporaneous newspaper accounts. Meanwhile, current events of 1997 and 1998 are covered in This Month in Brief, a section that's automatically refreshed when you perform a monthly update in the Deluxe Edition.

Aside from one shortcoming, World Book's maps remain the model that other encyclopedias should strive to emulate. Convenient overlay buttons transform political maps into informative demographic or climate maps.

This year's World Book introduces nearly 100 "bubble views"--3D virtual-reality tours of important buildings and other objects of interest. Though they lack the sound and still-photo connections provided by Encarta's "virtual tours," they surpass their Encarta counterparts by allowing users to look up and down as well as all around. With the bubble views, you can inspect the paintings on the walls of the Capitol rotunda and even take a flat-on-your-back look at the dome.

The depth of the World Book is similar to that found in Encarta and Grolier, slightly more than Compton's, and well below Collier's, Americana, and Britannica. But if this level meets your needs, go with World Book.

World Book 1998 Multimedia Encyclopedia Requires: 16MB RAM, 25MB disk space, Windows 3.1 or later; IBM PC Co., Atlanta, GA; 800-426-7235, 770-835-6881; www.worldbook.com

 


Copyright (c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Inc.