HIT: Granger's World of Poetry CD

[Peter Milbury <pmilbury@ERICIR.SYR.EDU>]

Dear LM_NET Colelagues,

Earlier this year I posted a Target on Granger's World of Poetry. I
received a few replies that people were having a few problems similar to
mine (printing excessive copies of the same poem), plus a few others.

Recently I received the following message from the company (Colubmia
University Press) that distributes the product. I felt that many of us
might like to know how the problems are working out.

Peter Milbury
Co-owner of LM_NET    pmilbury@ericir.syr.edu
Serving 5,000+ in the Virtual School Library Media Community
Librarian, Chico High School, Chico, CA
A National Blue Ribbon School & California Distinguished School
..............................................................
+Peter Milbury's School Library & School Librarian Web Pages+
          http://www.cusd.chico.k12.ca.us/~pmilbury/lib.html
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 1996 10:31:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert  Oppedisano <ro46@columbia.edu>
Subject: Granger's World of Poetry CD

Dear Mr. Milbury:

I've been anxious to reply to your April (!) LM_NET post about troubles
with Granger's CD; I've just received your registration card (thanks) and
have some news.

We can limit the search by full text poems, asking the search to run
against only those poems represented on the disc's anthology.

I've tried to replicate the printing problem you've encountered, and
talked at length with the owners of auto-graphics, the software developers
and tech support. I'll be talking more at ALA and will see what I can
learn and pass along.

We have just replaced the Granger's 3 year license with a permanent one,
and will be sending replacement discs to all subscribers after ALA--please
look for it. These new discs will be permanent. You have the option of
returning the current disc; the content is exactly the same.

For the next release, the focus is on dramatically improving
functionality, speed, and search options. The interface will be
overhauled, and we'll add new search categories, including poem genre and,
possible, categories for poets (gender, era, nationality, and the
like). We will add search delimiters, too, like that for full text.
We are also exploring brief biographical notes, a glossary of poetics, and
other pedagogical tools. We'll be taking our plans to a newly reconstitued
library advisory board.

The anthology will grow, but permissions costs prevent any  major
expansion of copyrighted  poems.

We understand that there is competition, including vaults of poems
accessible for free via the Web. We also understand, perhaps more clearly
now than before, the  need to take the perspective of the people who use
or manage our product. Being on LM_NET (and LIBREF-L) has been
essential for us. We thank you as moderator (and all LM_NETters) for
asuperbly informative and useful resource.

I do hope you can stop by, if only briefly, at ALA.

Best wishes,


Robert Oppedisano
Director of Marketing and Sales
Colubmia University Press