CTI Textual Studies L i t e r a t u r e

What CD-ROM can I buy for £150 which I can use for teaching? I teach Medieval literature.

I think that for £150 you might have a problem finding any CD-ROM for undergraduate use which gives you more than a single-user copy.

The Chaucer Life and Times CD-ROM, for example, costs £395 for University use (including the network licence). However, as you say, I am certainly not convinced of its value for undergraduate use. The cheaper CD-ROMs (especially those with significant multimedia content) are usually aimed at the National Curriculum where there is a defined market. Research oriented CD-ROMs (and therefore more specialised) do tend to be far more expensive for anything more than simply single copies.

If you really do not want to purchase a single copy of the Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM (to make available in the library?) then you may wish to wait a little longer until, for example, the Ductus CD-ROM is published. Ductus is designed to teach paleography and the history of Western handwriting. It is being produced by Bernard Muir at the University of Melbourne (http://www.arts.unimelb.edu/fcf/projects/ductus). He is also involved in an electronic edition of Edmer's Life of Saint Wilfred, also to be published on CD-ROM (see http://www.arts.unimelb.edu/fcf/projects/wilfred/index.html). No details of price are available but Ductus is due for release early 1997 and Edmer late in 1996 (soon, I assume). The Electronic Beowulf CD-ROM must be nearly ready for release though I don't have the details (mentioned at http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/). I don't think the The York Doomsday Project will have a CD-ROM until quite late in 1997.

I am sorry that I have not been of much help in this matter. It might become easier to develop the means of using research-related resources in the classroom as and when more material is digitized and made available over the network (even if this incurs an annual licensing fee for institutions).

(MF)

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Document created: 12 May 1997
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