Classic Scientific References And More Becoming Available On CD-ROM

Tempted by the enormous data storage capacities of CD-ROM disks and spurred by recent drops in their production costs, scientific publishers are making available to researchers an increasing number of novel reference tools. accompanying article is available from these publishers: ADONIS P.O. Box 839 NL-1000 Amsterdam, Netherlands 020 6842206 Product: ADONIS ALDRICH CHEMICAL CO. P.O. Box 355 1001 W. St. Paul Ave. Milwaukee, Wis. 53233 (800) 231-8327 Fax: (800) 962-9591 Product: ALDRICHEM Data Search JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS 2715 N. Charles St. Baltimore, Md. 21218 (410) 516-6960 Fax: (410) 516-6968 Products: Infrared Spectra of Minerals, Mendelian Inheritance in Man (in press) LIGHTBINDERS INC. 2325 Third St. Suite 320 San Francisco, Calif. 94107 (415) 621-5746 Fax: (415) 621-5898 Product: DARWIN MEDICAL ECONOMICS DATA, INC. 5 Paragon Dr. Montvale, N.J. 07645 (201) 358-7200 Fax: (201) 664-1902 Product: The Physicians' Desk Reference WORLD LIBRARY INC. 12914 Haster St. Garden Grove, Calif. 92640 (800) 443-0238 Fax: (714) 748-7198 Product: Library of theFuture, 2nd ed. Among these is a geological reference work that includes original mineral spectra data sets on a CD-ROM accompanying the printed text. Also available is a disk containing several of Charles Darwin's full texts with maps and illustrations in facsimile--as well as audio recordings of the songs of bird species Darwin encountered on his travels. In addition, several other classic scientific reference works are being considered or actively prepared for release in CD-ROM versions, including The Merck Index (11th ed., S. Budavari, et al., eds., Rahway, N.J., Merck & Co., 1989) and Mendelian Inheritance in Man (10th ed., V. McKusick, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). For the most part, these new tools build on the searching software and other strengths of the CD-ROM bibliographic databases that have proved so valuable in scientific literature searches. But now, they can include the full text--with full-text searching capability--or complete images of the original printed pages with the photos, graphs, and charts accompanying the text. "What everyone in publishing has realized in the last few years is that the mastering costs have just plummeted," says Richard O'Grady, science editor with Johns Hopkins University Press. "Only a few years ago, it was almost $10,000 [per CD-ROM]--now, it's less that $1,000. And unit costs afterwards are only about $2 to knock off copies." "Mastering" a CD-ROM refers to the process of creating the prototype product from which the copies are then made. The work O'Grady shepherded through production last year was Infrared Spectra of Minerals, by John W. Salisbury and associates (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). The printed book contains about 500 spectra of characterized minerals plotted on X/Y graphs, along with analysis of the information. In a pocket at the back of the book is a CD-ROM disk containing the raw spectral data upon which the graphs are based, so that scientists can work directly with those data if they need to do so. Because of the approximately 600 megabytes of available storage capacity on a CD-ROM, the raw data could be provided in both Macintosh and MS-DOS formats. In fact, the data take up only about 50 megabytes, even with the doubling to accommodate the needs of those two groups of users. The book and disk are designed to complement each other, according to O'Grady. "It's not as if we're replacing books--it's just value added, this product," he says. "It allows you to do more with the information the book communicates." Joy Crisp is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration volcanologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using spectral data collected by remote sensing satellites in her research. She worked closely with O'Grady as a reviewer of the book to ensure that it would be as useful as possible for researchers. After an early look, she recommended that the data be included in some form along with the printed text and graphs. "The book is almost useless to me as a scientist if I don't have the raw data so that I can, using my computer, plot up the data and compare it against spectra that I take off my own rocks," she says. Crisp explains that the graphs in the book, which represent a library of the spectra from "perfect" minerals, are helpful but not precise enough to help her work with a typical specimen. "If you grab a rock in the desert," Crisp says, "some rock that has a mixture of minerals, and you're trying to interpret it, you need to go back to the raw data to compare." According to press representative Judy Adkinson, another CD-ROM project under way at Johns Hopkins University Press aims to put Victor McKusick's classic genetics reference, Mendelian Inheritance in Man, on disk. The disk version should be finished in time for the October 5-9 meeting in New Orleans this year of the American Society of Human Genetics, she says. In addition, the text will be fully searchable--once a search program has been decided upon. "The most complicated thing has been trying to figure out what would be the best search program to use," Adkinson says, "because there are a lot out there." Even though the latest print edition runs to more than 2,200 pages, she says, and the CD-ROM will include both Macintosh and MS-DOS format files, there still will be storage capacity on the disk for other uses. "We have a nice core of genetics reference books," Adkinson says. "I want to start adding some of those other references to the McKusick CD-ROM, because there will be plenty of room." Adkinson anticipates that purchasers of the McKusick CD-ROM will include some individuals, departments, and research groups as well as academic libraries. One reason for this may be the low cost: Adkinson expects to release updates to the work every six months, with one year's pair of disks starting at $250. Among the growing number of scientific references now available on CD-ROM is ALDRICHEM Data Search, containing data on 50,000 chemicals drawn primarily from The Aldrich Catalog Handbook of Fine Chemicals (Milwaukee, Aldrich Chemical Co., 1992). Another is The Physicians' Desk Reference, containing the complete text of the print volume of the same title (47th ed., Montvale, N.J., Medical Economics Data Inc., 1993.) And others are likely to follow in the next few years. According to a company spokesperson, for example, a CD-ROM version of The Merck Index also is under consideration. Even the venerable Charles Darwin is now available on CD-ROM. In fact, Darwin is available in several versions. The general-interest reader may want to have the full texts of Darwin's The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man on a CD-ROM product called Library of the Future from World Library Inc., Garden Grove, Calif. That reader will also be able to enjoy the other 900-plus full-text titles available on that disk, including many of the world's more prominent religious, philosophical, historical, and literary--as well as scientific--titles. A scholar of Darwin, on the other hand, is now able to work with the complete texts and original illustrations of those titles, along with original maps from the surveying voyages of the HMS Beagle and the HMS Adventure, sound recordings from the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology, and an array of supplemental study materials related to Darwin's work and life. DARWIN, a CD-ROM release, is available from Lightbinders Inc. in San Francisco. For scientists, reference to primary research literature, usually journals, is paramount. Discipline-specific bibliographic databases on CD-ROM and in other formats have eased the task of tracking down references to needed articles, but it has still been necessary to then find a copy of the article. But now, a growing area of CD-ROM science reference publishing is providing full image files of journal articles along with the bibliographic reference. These files are, for the most part, scanned images of the journal pages themselves, complete with charts, graphs, and other illustrations. According to Andrew Berks, a research chemical information scientist with American Cyanamid Co., Pearl River, N.Y., such products are used analogously to a microfilm collection. "But the copies are better," he says, "and it uses off-the-shelf computer hardware that's less expensive than good-quality microfilm readers." One CD-ROM image product, called ADONIS from a company by the same name located in Amsterdam, is especially targeted for biomedical researchers. Articles, letters, and abstracts from 497 biomedical journals published by Blackwell Scientific Publications, ier Science Publishers, Pergamon Journals, Springer Verlag, John Wiley, and others are included. Many of those involved in developing CD-ROM versions of works more familiar in their text forms note that the printed page will still retain its appeal for some time to come. One editor, mulling the possibility of creating a CD-ROM version of a respected, century-old scientific reference, who requests anonymity because of company restrictions, puts it this way: "If you're a lab scientist, and you have a single-volume book that sits on your shelf in your lab, and you need to look something up quickly, it's right there at your fingertips--vs. your CD-ROM player, which is probably attached to your computer back in your office. If you're familiar with a book, and it's sort of an old friend, and you're looking up a specific item, then do you really need electronic search capabilities?" This editor adds: "Everybody still learns from books right now, so it's habit, also. There is persistence to the book--we would not give up the book in favor of a CD-ROM product." Perhaps because students do still learn from books, primarily, scientific textbook publishers do not seem to be in a great hurry to bring their products out on CD-ROM. For example, a spokesperson for Worth Publishers Inc. in New York City, publishers of Principles of Biochemistry, 2nd ed., by A. Lehninger, D. Nelson, and M. Cox, says there are "no plans in the works" to bring the text out on CD-ROM. Andrew Berks of American Cyanamid agrees that books will hold their places in a researcher's reference collection, although the use of CD-ROM publications will continue to grow. "A CD-ROM is really not as convenient as opening a book," Berks says, "if a book is conveniently available."

Classic Scientific References And More Becoming Available On CD-ROM

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