The flashiest are Microsoft Encarta '95 (Microsoft Corporation, about $100 Windows now, Macintosh in January) and Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia 1995 edition (Compton's Newmedia Inc., ) about $80, Windows now Macintosh in January). Now they are given away with computers and multimedia kits and include things door-to-door salesmen never dreamed of. Once encyclopedias were ordered largely by librarians and occasionally by teachers. Despite occasional glitches, this is precisely the kind of work that makes you want to rush out and buy a whole CD-ROM library.
The disk includes a brief written history of the language, "the third or fourth most commonly used" language in the United States today. Sound is not essential in the sign-language disk, but it is available. No videotape accepts commands in five languages, or replay each word again and again at any speed desired, or keep track of who has used the dictionary and which words they have seen. No book could be as effective in showing real people using these highly animated, metaphoric and visual words (including my favorite, the M-shaped arches that signify McDonald's). This is the work for which the medium might have been invented. Just when you begin to wonder if multimedia can emerge from its Berle Age, along comes The American Sign Language Dictionary on CD-ROM (HarperCollins Interactive, Windows and Macintosh, about $50). Unless otherwise noted, they run only on Windows. Still, interesting and useful multimedia works are increasingly available, and some of them are reviewed here. Since it is typically quite expensive, it should be bought with an unconditional money-back guarantee. Like movies and pay television, CD-ROM software cannot easily be looked at before it is purchased. There is no reason to suspect that multimedia titles will have a higher success rate than their counterparts in arts, letters and entertainment.
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