Hello Fellow Dickens Readers,

I usually just listen on this list. I am just a lay Dickens reader. I would like to share my experience with a great piece of software. I just bought, for about $40, one CD on CD. It is called "Like the Dickens". It is truely wonderful! It contains all his works! It has a glossary in the form of hypertext, so you can click on a word and get its definition or background information. It has photographs, character sketches, and is written in large, easy to read type. Another feature I like is the way you can insert and annotate bookmarks. Maybe some of you will get lucky for Christmas!

I used this product and didn't like it at all. As one graduate student here put it when I demonstrated it to him, "This isn't anything like fun."
The cd would be great if it lived up to its promise, but I don't think it does.
Word searches are s-l-o-w and s-t-u-p-i-d: I was running the disk on a pentium machine and it would take a good 5 minutes to search for the word "law" in Pickwick Papers. And then the first hit was, of course "Mother-in-law." The next search for "law" would take another 5 minutes, only to land on "mother -in-law" two lines down the page.
The glossary is impossible: The definition returned for "mantle" was "glisten" even though the context implied that "mantle" is a noun found somewhere near a "fireplace." Similar nonsense was returned on about a third of the words I tried.
Just two examples of many problems I had. I wouldn't recommend it unless someone absolutely needed it for its search capability, and was willing to read a real book--a real long book, like a Dickens novel-- while she waited for the machine to grind around.
I should mention that The Dickens Project provided the Bureau of Electronic Publishing with public domain materials that they scanned in, and made a few introductions to Dickensians, but we had nothing to do with the quality or contents of the product.
These opinions are my own, but I am,
Linda Hooper
Dickens Project Coordinator

From: Patrick McCarthy
Subject: Regarding that CD on CD
To: Multiple recipients of list DICKNS-L

Despite Linda Hooper's severe criticism of the Dickens CD so much praised by Frank Cook, we have had the politest of requests from Peter Shillingsburg, Tom Willshire, and Eric Johnson on how and where to purchase the CD.
Lou Burnard wants to know, "if, that is, it's possible to extract the texts themselves from the software used to access them--without using the clunky interface provided. Some of us have strong views on how to make such texts really processable!"
Frank Cook! Where are you? Where did you get your CD? And how usable or transferable are its materials?

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 95 9:16:31 EST
From: Frank Cook To: DICKNSL@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: Regarding that CD on CD

Patrick McCarthy

The Bureau of Electronic Publishing Inc. 141 New Road Parsippany, NJ 07054 sells the CD CD. There telephone number is 201-8082700, Ex 22
Extracts can be printed, but I was unsuccessful in attempts to transfer text.
When I first submitted "CD on CD" it was just after purchasing the CD at my local computer store, 'Micro Center'. I was so excited to have the entire collection of CD on such a convenient little piece of plastic. Now that I have used it a while, I must admit it does have some short comings, particularly the inane glossary. But, all in all, I still think the CD is a wonderfull joy, well worth much more than the $40 I paid!

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 08:22:41 -0500
From: David Paroissien To: DICKNS-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: CD on Disks

Patrick,

I suggest that people who want access to Dickens on disk are best directed to the floppies put out by Fred Levit. Almost all of the novels are available on disks of both sizes (3.5 or 5.25) designed to run on any IMB compatible computer.
For details: e-mail: fle426@nwu.edu
or Hall Design, 250 Maple Avenue, Wilmette IL 60091.
I reviewed his disk version of CC some time ago for Dickens Quarterly. He has a decent search and retrieval system. Altogether, an impressive project, I think.

Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 09:32:28 -0400 (EDT) From: LDESSNE@UOFT02.UTOLEDO.EDU
To: DICKNS-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: Regarding that CD on CD

Most, perhaps all now, of Dickens's novels are available in electronic form, either free through gutenberg and others on the internet or at modest cost from Hall Design, fle426@nwu.edu for info. These texts are in ascii form, or readily converted to it. Often bold, and other effects, are indicated by _ * and the like. I use the WordCruncher programs to create indexes, and then to search them-- at lightening speed--. Unfortunately WordCruncher seems to have gone out of business, so the DOS program is not available for sale or support. It takes some effort to learn to prepare texts for indexing, several hours per novel if you want it indexed to the page level. And these texts are not made from state of the art bibliographically speaking editions. Even so, they are marvelously convenient, and even have some promise as research tools. I'd be happy to provide further details via email. Larry Dessner English Univeristy of Toledo (ohio) ldessne@uoft02.utoledo.edu

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 15:13:02 -0500
From: Don Richard Cox
To: Charles Dickens Forum Subject: Re: CD C-D ROM, an Inquiry

Yes, I also e-mailed Ken about this and he graciously bought me a copy which arrived yesterday. In fact, I was going to write you about this because the disk credits Dickens World for its contribution, yet I have seen nothing on this list about the disk that apparently your group helped create. I tried it last night and was VERY PLEASED. I cannot say that I have mastered it, because I could only work with it for about 20 minutes, but this is what I found.

It installs simply and easily. No tricks, no problems, no stress. You simply type SETUP and you're off and running. It comes with musical introductions to the screens, and includes a set of character pictures with a voice narration. That is, for many, but not all, of the novels, there are short lists of characters--not necessarily the major characters in these novels. If you click on these you get a picture of the character and a printed passage from the novel describing this character; then, a proper British voice reads the description out loud to you. I did find the pictures of the characters strange because it does not always use the original drawings. Some of these character illustrations, in fact, seem to be drawn from sources outside Dickens and do not resemble the original characters at all. One I looked at--Snagsby, I think--simply appeared to be a photograph of a Victorian gentleman whose appearance matched the prose description. Except for these pictures of selected individuals, none of the original illustrations is included.

You can also enter a small number of characters, places, or topics and it will pull up a picture and description. For example, Uriah Heep is not listed among the four or five characters for which you can get a narrated portrait. But if you type Heep you get a picture of him and his mother and a descriptive passage--but no sound. I tried entering a number of topics that I thought might be on the disk but had no luck so I can't really say how many topics or places it may identify for you. There is a glossary of words that may be difficult for students and one can click on them for definitions--one I remember seeing is "cravat."

Of course the search capability is the central issue for most of us. Here I would rate this disk good but not perfect. I tested it by opening novels at random and finding unusual words or descriptions and then typing them in to see whether the program would find them. It works very well at this but only in a rudimentary way. For example, in Little Dorrit I found the expression "quarantine ground." I entered that and it found it, but it also found "quarantine" by itself. I suspect it also found "ground" by itself. I entered the term "familiar gate" which I found in one novel. It searched a long time--maybe 60 seconds--and came up with something like 158 examples, which may have been every gate in Dickens, familiar or not. I am not saying it cannot do a more sophisticated search, only that I didn't figure out how to do such a thing in the time I worked with it. If this is the extent of its search capability, I can live with this limitation for the price I paid. You can limit your search to a selected work, selected group, or search the complete works--which on this disk are 17 novels, 56 short stories, plus a number of non-fiction essays (I forget how many). When you find an example--say whale, which is a word I searched for--it identifies the book and chapter where this reference may be found and produces a list. You can click on each item in the list--say Dombey and Son, Ch. 4--and it will bring up the passage where the reference is found.

I can say that I am very pleased with the disk. I must admit that I glanced up at my Gadshill Edition--thirty-six volumes I think--and marveled that this disk contained the same complete works. On the disk someplace, and I tried to find it a second time but couldn't locate it, is a list of other disks that are available from this same company, which is located in New Jersey. The address of the company is of course on the disk but it's at home and I'm at work right now. Although the disk I got from Ken Cole was labeled "previously played," it came sealed in plastic and contained a product reply card. In short, if it was used it was certainly not used very much. Can other new disks be purchased from this company for the many Dickensians who didn't get one of these $9.99 specials? If Dickens World was a collaborator or consultant, as the disk certainly states, can someone there tell us what edition may have been used, or how the text was scanned, checked, etc.?

So there is probably more than you wanted to know about this disk. I would not call it a "great" CD-ROM package, but it is adequate. I think what we need to do is somehow put the company who makes this in touch with this list and possibly the Victoria list. I suspect there are many who would be very glad to have this.

Don Richard Cox, Professor and Associate Head Department of English, University of Tennessee Knoxville, TN 37996-0430
Ph: (423) 974-6930
FAX: (423) 974-6926
dcox@utk.edu

"The Dickens Page"

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