Creating a CD-ROM from scratch: a case study

ABSTRACT

Technology has moved us to the point where creating a CD-ROM as an alternative to paper volumes is not only cost effective, but also provides an opportunity to add significant value to the information presented, both in terms of quantity and usefulness. The past year has been a pivotal one in terms of access to simple and cost-effective tools and technologies that push “personal publishing” of CD-ROMs closer to reality for a whole range of publishers and information providers. This paper will review the development cycle of SPIE's first CD-ROM product, the Electronic Imaging '93 Proceedings on CD-ROM, a hybrid Windows/Macintosh disc that was created without the use of any of the proprietary (and often expensive) software royalty-based contracts that have been the established turn-key solution until now. The intent of this paper is to provide a first-hand look at the developmental, technical, and financial issues involved in creating a CD-ROM publication.

REFERENCES

• 1: Robinson, P. The Digitization of Primary Text Sources. Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication, Oxford University Computer Services. 1993.
• 2: Fabrizio Caffarelli , Deirdre Straughan, Publish Yourself on CD-ROM: Mastering CDs for Multimedia, Random House Inc., New York, NY, 1992
• 3: Ray Siemens, Practical content analysis techniques for text-retrieval in large, un-tagged text-bases, Proceedings of the 11th annual international conference on Systems documentation, p.293-299, October 05-08, 1993, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada [doi>10.1145/166025.166090]
• 4: Charles F. Goldfarb, The SGML handbook, Oxford University Press, Inc., New York, NY, 1991
• 5: Dowe, James, HI. "Content-Based Retrieval in Multimedia Imaging," in Storage and Retrieval for Image Video Databases, Wayne Niblack, Editor, Proc. SPIE 1908, pp. 164-167. 1993.
• 6: Lane, Tom; et al. "JPEG FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)," from news.answers archive at rtfm.mit.edu (18.172.1.27). 1994.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)

General Terms:
Documentation, Theory