Designing Better Software for the Humanities

By Leonard Rosen

For $49.95 -- perhaps one day somebody will explain what's magical about this typical price for computer software -- I recently bought 1,896 books on CD-ROM. The technical achievement is extraordinary: For about 1/400th of the price I'd pay for the same books on paper, I now own a personal library of "Great Works," with an author list that begins with Addison and Aeschylus and ends with Virgil, Whitman, and Wordsworth. Navigation through these books is instantaneous. If I want to visit my