A Primer on the Middle East
Political Encyclopedia of the
Middle East, CD-ROM, Davka,
2000, $79.95
by Mitchell Bard
This program was a major disappointment. It is
chock full of information about virtually every aspect of Middle East
politics, but it is very clunky to use and lacks the bells and
whistles one expects from reference software today. It has no audio
or video, for example, and the handful of maps included are terrible
black and white ones. The program was easy to install, but has a
number of quirks. For example, when you print an article, it
disappears from the screen. It took me a few minutes to figure out
you had to hit a back arrow to get it back. The search engine was a
bigger problem. The first search I tried was for Assad. Nothing came
back. Shocked, it again took me awhile to figure out that the authors
of the CD used a different spelling, Asad. I'm not sure how many
other people would think of this, since the American press usually
spells the name Assad. The documentation is also pitiful, a couple of
mimeographed pages. Given that most of the material on the CD can be
found now for free on the web from the various reference sites, this
disk is probably only for libraries and people who want to have every
resource on the subject in their library.
Sources: Mitchel Bard is the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise |