CD's - aren't they dead yet?

[Donald A. Barclay]

Tim,

A recent review of a book that I wrote about managing public-access 
computers took me to task for devoting an entire chapter to CD-ROMs. I 
opened the chapter by discussing the whole "Is the CD-ROM dead?" question 
and citing statistics which indicate that the CD-ROM is going to be around 
for a while, but I believe the reviewer just didn't want to believe it.

For now, CD-ROM is alive. Which is not to say that I wouldn't go to extreme 
lengths to get something via the Web rather than on CD-ROM. Especially if I 
had any intention of networking it.

The trend in networking CD-ROM (and DVD) seems to be machines that cache 
CD-ROMs rather than CD-ROM towers or jukeboxes. Though I've never used such 
a machine myself, the ads for most claim that they are accessible via Web 
browser, compatible with all the major networking softwares, etc.

To me the best thing about caching machines is the price. We had a library 
administrator who wanted us to network a number of rarely used CD-ROMs, but 
when we informed her of the price of a CD-ROM caching machine, she gave up 
that idea in about two seconds. Saved us a world of headaches.

DB

-----Original Message-----
From:	Tripp, Tim [SMTP:tim.tripp at uhn.on.ca]
Sent:	Monday, July 24, 2000 12:39 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/