patth@dasys1.UUCP (Patt Haring) (09/03/87)
FACTWORKS INFORMATION DISKS
by
Lee Hayward
Imagine the power of AppleWorks combined with the power of
an encyclopedia. Thousands of facts can be at your fingertips,
with the ability to sort, search, and print at any time. This
is the claim of FactWorks, a three-disk set of AppleWorks files
from ImagiMedia. With FactWorks, you can figure out the
payments on that new car you want, find out who was the third
vice president of the United States, look at a list of Grammy
winners, or obtain a copy of the Gettysburg address for a report.
To use FactWorks, you boot AppleWorks and then load
FactWorks as you would any AppleWorks file. Several of its
files are larger than 10K. Volume 1 contains 26 files with
"home reference" files and information about animals and
geography. Volume 2, with 33 files, concentrates on science,
sports, and a bit of home reference. The third volume has 29
files on history, people, and documents/forms.
Let's look at volume 1 in a little detail. The first file
that caught my attention was Dinosaurs. Since I am an
elementary school librarian and the father of 2 girls, I get a
lot of requests for information on this subject. This database
has 321 records presented in five fields: dinosaur (name),
suborder, family, where first discovered, and notes. The
package has similar files on cats, dogs, mammals, and reptiles.
The problem I have with calling this software an
encyclopedia is that an encyclopedia, usually 20 or more
volumes, provides detailed information about a particular
subject, not just a listing of information in a database.
Second, as a teacher and librarian, I believe the issue of
authority is important in using any reference tool. Where did
the facts originate? For instance, the Mountains file lists
nine mountains in Colorado (my home state) higher than 14,999
feet, however, leaving numerous mountains unaccounted for. What
criteria led to the choice of the nine and the omission of
the others? The authorities who contributed to the database
could have been credited in the manual.
The documentation - for this type of software - is fine.
It has a small section on using the program and some hints and
techniques for using the files. Because of the nature of the
software, it is not copy-protected, and ImagiMedia encourages
you to make working copies (it supplies preprinted disk labels
for your disks), so you always have the original in case of a
problem or mistake. ImagiMedia guarantees the master disks for
life, with free replacement if a file fails to load. In
addition, it provides a daytime support phone number to answer
questions about FactWorks. Since FactWorks files are AppleWorks
files, you can also add your own information to the various
databases and spreadsheets and save them to a data disk.
Despite the concerns I've mentioned, I like this package.
The disks contain something for almost everyone, with
information that is often hard to track down (such as a list of
the United Nations members) when you need it. The home-mortgage
spreadsheet is fast and lets you see what your new monthly
payments will be. I also like the way the authors have laid
out the screen displays in the databases by using a little-known
feature of AppleWorks to change the layout of the single-record
display. (you can try this technique by zooming in on a single
record and then typing open-apple/L to arrange the fields
anywhere in the screen.)
I expect to see more volumes of FactWorks and think that
many schools and families will appreciate having this kind of
information at their fingertips.
------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Hayward is an elementary-school media specialist in the
Cherry Creek school district in Colorado. In his spare time, he
is the chairman of TAWUG, The AppleWorks Users Group, a
clearinghouse for AppleWorks information and templates.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
FactWorks
ImagiMedia Software
16640 Roscoe Place
Sepulveda, CA 91343
(818)891-3707
List Price: $32.95 per volume
Requires: Apple IIe, IIc, or IIGS; 128K RAM; 5 1/4-inch disk
drive; AppleWorks. ProDOS; not copy-protected; does not work
with mouse.
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