[WEB4LIB] CD's - aren't they dead yet?

[Masters, Gary E]

My experience has been to go with web based products.  However, when I had
to, I put the data on a server hard drive and used it that way.  (After I
got legal rights to do so, of course.) Some work better than others.  Never
have used the products that are designed to aid this (as W3Launch) so I
don't know about them.   But I find this much easier than CD towers which
(for me) were an endless time of SCSI trouble shooting and server failures.
At night and on weekends I got this - "Gary, the CD server is down.  Can you
come over and reboot it?"

Good luck!

Gary



Gary E. Masters
Librarian (Systems)
CDRH - FDA
(301) 827-6893 

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Tripp, Tim [SMTP:tim.tripp at uhn.on.ca]
	Sent:	Monday, July 24, 2000 1:39 PM
	To:	Multiple recipients of list
	Subject:	[WEB4LIB] CD's - aren't they dead yet?

	Greetings, Gentlefolk,

	Apparently the reports of the CD's death as a technology have been
"greatly
	exaggerated."  I've been asked to investigate the feasibility of
networking
	a number of multimedia CD-ROM's with access via a web interface.
These are
	all medical titles which are owned by our Medical Education dept.  I
guess
	even I had fallen victim to the hype of the web, and thought that it
would
	solve all of our access problems, but apparently, it has yet to
match the
	interactive and multimedia capabilities of the CD-ROM.

	I've searched the archives, and found a number of references to
W3Launch,
	but there's not been much discussion on this topic in the last year
- which
	is hardly surprising given that most vendors now have web interfaces
to
	their products.  Is anybody still doing this?  Any tips or pointers
you can
	offer?  Frankly, I'm more tempted to find web based alternatives to
these
	products, I'm just not sure that comparable alternatives exist.

	Tim

	--

	Tim Tripp 
	Clinical Decision Support, Project Manager
	University Health Network
	Suite 201, 700 Bay Street
	Toronto, ON Canada M5G 1Z6
	http://www.uhealthnet.on.ca/
	Voice : (416) 340-5266
	Fax : (416) 340-3391
	Work : tim.tripp at uhn.on.ca
	Home : ttripp at sympatico.ca
	http://www3.sympatico.ca/ttripp/