Review #3 to be published in NORTHERN MARINER

Return to Contents John Franklin. JOURNEY TO THE SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA, IN THE YEARS 1819, '20, '21 AND '22 (London, 1823; CD-ROM edition, Dartmouth, NS: CD-Academia Book Co., 1998, $69.95 (personal use); $195 (institutional use), CD-ROM; ISBN 1-894127-01-3. Distributed by the University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. John Franklin. NARRATIVE OF A SECOND EXPEDITION TO THE SHORES OF THE POLAR SEA ,IN THE YEARS 1825, '26, AND '27 (London, 1828;CD-ROM edition, Dartmouth, NS: CD-Academia Book Co., 1998, $59.95 (personal use);$165 (institutional use), CD-ROM; ISBN 1-894127-04-8. Distributed by the University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON. Franklin's classic narratives are the first two titles in the 'Arctic Discovery' series of CD-ROMs currently being published by Nova Scotia's CD-Academia Book Company. Back (1836 & 1838) and Lyon (1825) are now available; Ross (1835) is forthcoming. CD-Academia has a useful web site at www.cd-books.com, from which titles can be ordered directly. Given that a copy of the 1971 Hurtig reprint of the Second Expedition was recently offered for sale [October 1999] at US$125, CD-Academia's prices are pretty reasonable. To read these CD-ROMs you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you have Windows 95 (as I do), this takes only about a minute to install after you have loaded the CD-ROM for the first time. It appears to be somewhat more complicated if you use another operating system. My computer is a laptop (Toshiba Satellite 4030CDS) with a Celeron chip; the other technological device employed was a pair of reading glasses for middle distance. On every occasion I have started to read one of these CD-ROMs I have been greeted with that dire" illegal operation" warning. Ignoring this, with the devil-may-care attitude that Frankin so admired in the English seaman, I have had no problems. There is the occasional sound of protest which suggests that my computer finds itself overtaxed. If you wish to read one of these books as Franklin intended, by beginning at the beginning and going on until the end, you simply go to the Table of Contents and click on Chapter One. This takes you to page one in its entirety; pages are 'turned' with the Enter key. At the end of the chapter, you must return to Contents and click on Chapter Two. As a physical experience it is much more comfortable than reading a lengthy text on microfilm or on the Web. The default text is a tweaked version of the original, which is easy on the eyes and yet retains the beauty of the original typography. The text can be enlarged if you wish. You can also look at the scanned version of the original page simply by clicking on the Image button which appears on every page. There are two ways to find specific references within the text. You can use the Table of Contents with all those sub-headings and click on the sub-heading you want. This is a welcome improvement on leafing through a lengthy chapter for the reference that the Table of Contents has indicated is somewhere in there. There is also a Search Engine. Since the more accustomed you become to a Search Engine the better the results you get from it, it may not be altogether fair of me to say that I found the Search Engine excellent for finding specific words and phrases but otherwise not as helpful as an index prepared by a capable indexer would be. There are key words but Inuit, for example, does not seem to be one of them. In order to locate Franklin's references to Inuit it is best to use the words he used, such as 'Esquimaux'. There is a Sounds Like option; a search for 'Eskimo' drew a blank but 'Eskimos' was successful. The illustrations and maps are available in colour or black and white, depending on the original, both as low-resolution images, for quick consulting, and high-resolution images, for more detail and for printing. This ability to print images and, of course, the text, means that reproductions of good quality, for use in handouts, papers,theses, etc. are available cheaply and easily. There is no need to go to the trouble and expense of photography or to importune a stony-hearted librarian for photocopies. Access to the maps is particularly good, as they can be viewed and printed at increasing levels of detail and magnification. The CD-Academia web site has a handy guide to viewing maps, which is worth consulting. Before viewing these CD-ROMs I thought of them only as an alternative to reprints for readers who do not have access to the original editions or who want a version of the text to read at a time and place convenient to them. For librarians who have original editions in their care and wish to spare them from active use as much as possible the CD-ROMs will also serve the same purpose as reprints. Now, however, it is obvious that these CD-ROMs provide more than a reprint and more than an original edition. It is not just of question of the ease with which maps can be viewed and printed, for example. While reading a Franklin first edition is a special and privileged experience, it can remove us from Franklin's own time even as it seems to draw us closer. His first readers, after all, were not buying an old book, which needed to be treated as gently as an invalid. They were buying a new book, which represented the pinnacle of modern book-production technology. They were anticipating the pleasure of reading about recent thrilling events written by one of the participants. They did not have all the baggage that encumbers us in any encounter with Franklin. To sit down at one's computer, that gateway to the world of today, and read "Sunday, the 23rd of May, the whole of our party embarked at Gravesend on board the ship Prince of Wales...", is to experience Franklin once more as a contemporary voice. Anne Morton Public Archives Winnipeg, Manitoba Return to Top ...