Phil Bradley
UKOLUG Quick Guide to CD-ROM Networking
Publisher: UK Online User Group, 1996.
ISBN: 1-870254-09-0
Price: 16 pounds (12 pounds to UKOLUG members)
Review by Jon Knight
Networking CD-ROMs is, as many of the readers of this publication know, one of the banes of my life. So it was with some interest that I started to read Phil Bradley's UKOLUG Quick Guide to CD-ROM Networking.
The first part of the book starts off with a brief introduction to networking for those new to the subject and then moves on to discussing the various ways in which CD-ROM drives may be networked, how to make the purchasing decisions and how to manage the resulting system, the CD-ROM licensing and the inevitable technical problems. The last of these will be especially useful to those only just coming to CD-ROM networking as it is still often considered a black art, especially on DOS/MS-Windows machines.
Terry Hanson of Unversity of Portsmouth Library also provides a very interesting perspective on how useful CD-ROMs are likely to be in the strategic information plans of many organisations. He not only looks at CD-ROMs but also their competition in the form of local and remote online databases with common query languages and front ends. At first this chapter seems very negative, pointing out that 600MB is now a relatively small amount of data, that CD-ROMs are far slower than magnetic media, that CD-ROMs are updated less frequently than online services and that CD-ROMs can be difficult to network.
This gives one the feeling that CD-ROMs are on their last legs when compared to online services, which seems at odds with the fact that the number of available CD-ROM titles now exceeds 13,000 and is still growing. However further into the chapter the mood changes and in the end, CD-ROMs appear to have bit of wind left in them yet. This is strengthened by the following chapter on the general future of CD-ROM networking, where it is pointed out that optical technology is likely to still be with us for many years to come, even if the devices of the future bear little relation to the CD-ROMs of today.
The second part of the book provides overviews of most of the products currently available in the UK for networking CD-ROMs. This will be very handy as a first comparison for organisations contemplating making purchasing decisions, although some of the product descriptions are somewhat short compared to capabilities offered by the products. A list of some supplier addresses is also included in this chapter, although it is far from complete and I would say that there are certain benefits in dealing with a local supplier that the library may already have a working relationship with.
This is followed by a number of case studies in part three. The case studies show how the networked CD-ROM products from the previous section are actually being used in real organisations. These organisation range from schools to University libraries and so the appeal of the book is not limited to just academic libraries. As every organisation has its own particular idiosyncrasies and needs, these can obviously only be a taster for what CD-ROMs might hold in store. The also provider a useful source of ideas for ways of approaching common problems (such as handling printing from CD-ROMs - I particularly like the idea of using very cheap, very slow IBM thermal printers as people will soon learn not to print out large numbers of records!).
The book is rounded out with appendicies giving lists of useful resources, a copy of the current CDROMLAN Frequently Asked Questions and a glossary. The CDROMLAN mailing list is something that I was pleased to see mentioned in the book as I've found it to be an excellent source of help and advice about CD-ROM networking.
All in all, I'd say that the book was a very good introduction to CD-ROM networking for those new to the field and also a pretty interesting read for those of us with more experience in the field. After all it is nice to know that you're not alone in thinking that some CD-ROMs are a pain to network and that licensing is a mess. Joe Bob says check it out.
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original authors. This page last updated on September 11th 1996