Monarch Notes CD, Gale's DiscAuthors CD compared

[Bob Koechley <koechley@STUDENTS.WISC.EDU>]

I ran a side by side comparison (with the help of three English teachers)
of Gale's Discovering Authors CD, with the Monarch Notes CD.

BACKGROUND: We are a rural school district with about 280 stus 9-12. Our
literary reference assets have been meager. All three teachers agree to
assign research papers to their 10-11-12 grade students during the 60 days
we had DA (approx $500) on a free trial. We already had Monarch Notes
(approx $60) on CD from a corporate donor.

The students were assigned 5-10 page papers which required considerable
author bio info.  They also were seeking  published critical opinions
regarding a book and it's author.

QUICK SUMMARY:

I have decided to buy the Gale product because of it's wealth and variety
of critical comment, it's easy to use interface and because to acquire this
much high quality info on paper would be prohibitively expensive (espically
during the resurection of our collection currently underway). Each author
entry has about 6-8 critical essays, often written by critics of different
eras. The J.D. Salinger section, for example,  has an essay from the early
50's on Catcher in the Rye, one from the 60's  and more recent essays also.
The Brontes section had essays from the 1890's and onward separated by
10-20 years or so. One of our English teachers felt this was a valuable
feature.

On the down side the intended original audience for much of the criticism
is far above the ability of many students.  Junior and senior college bound
studenst seemed to have little problem.

I will buy Discovering Authors for the benefit of those students willing to
do serious reading and thinking, ie. to often use a dictionary. The
onscreen instructions for using DiscAuthors are the best I've seen on any
of the 23 reference cd's I've reviewed.

The Monarch Notes CD covers 200 major works.  A decent bio is provided for
each author.  The entries are more focused that in DA.  Many entries have
chapter by chapter descriptions of the plot development, and small
explanatory essays on things like character development, imagery, voice,
and other literary concepts.
The contents are more accessable, useful and focused (for more students)
than the DA CD.  Additional interesting features are provided such as the
original frontispiece art from the Raven, famouus stage and film character
illustrations from adaptations of the works and other graphics.

The actual software controls in Monarch Notes need improvement. Printing
portions of an entry is not easy (I don't know if it's even possible), the
pull down menus aren't exactly what you'd think they are, and in general
the CD isn't the easiest to use.  On the up side the search engine is quick
and seemingly quite effective.

NET / NET

I have decided that both of these products is a great addition to our
reference collection.  Neither can completely take the place of the other.
A lot of overlap exists among titles. Since Gale focuses on authors, in
some cases it contained little or nothing on a particular title by an
author (while containing excellent bio info on that author). The Monarch
Notes series focuses on titles, so if they have a title at all you get the
whole treatment: bio and numerous mini essays. The Monarch Notes will be
helpful to a wider range of students.

I'd like to be definitive, to strongly recommend one or the other CD for
purchase. I have to waffle and say buy both.

CAVEAT:
One of three teachers pointed out how super easy it is for students to down
load these info sets to disk, import them to a word processor and cut and
paste a pretty nifty essay. From our side, as info providers, I don't see
this as a break from conditions prior to CD's. Either product on paper
combined with a xerox equals the same problem, it only saves student
typing.

Dealing with the problem of student laziness, avoidance of reading and
thought, willingness to claim other's work as their own etc. are not issues
for this review.  The teachers were estatic with the improvement in
coverage we achieved by adding these CD's to our reference collection.
Cybernetically Yours,

Bob Koechley
District Librarian
101 So. Grant St.
Belleville, WI  53508 USA
koechley@students.wisc.edu