 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group John Gould's Birds of Australia Bob Burt bobburt@melbpc.org.au |
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I imagine that most people with a lively interest in nature, and in bird life in particular, will have seen at least some reproductions of Gould's famous plates of Australian birds. It is equally likely that very few will have seen copies of all 681 plates that appeared in Gould's eight volume folio works of the Birds of Australia (1840-1848) and his Supplement (1869), since even the facsimiles are worth well in excess of $1000.
This locally produced CD-ROM offering makes Gould's works much more accessible. It reproduces all the folio works and incorporates text from his Handbook to the Birds of Australia. The disc also includes a brief biography of John Gould and maps and photographs of the areas in which he travelled during his visit to Australia from September 1838 to April 1840.
You need to install the disc before use. Less than 1 MB of hard disk space is used, but you need at least ten times this amount to allow for temporary file creation while running the program from the CD-ROM.
Using the program
The program has been designed around the Asymetrix resource Multimedia Toolbook and has a natural flow. A How to use section provides all the instructions you will need to scan and control the output, but essentially you simply use the right mouse button to access a popup menu, the left mouse button to show picture (or text) full screen and left and right arrow keys to move between pages. The up and down arrows show and hide the toolbar, while Alt+F4 triggers the exit from the program.
The major format is a 640 x 480 display of each Australian bird in the series, together with a scrollable text section. Left-clicking generates full screen versions of the picture or text, as required.
The bird reproductions are in either vertical or horizontal format, depending on how Gould created the originals. The horizontal format birds are reproduced in the "bird plus text" display in a sideways position, but are generated in proper horizontal format in the full screen versions. However, this format has the advantage that its full screen version is of the entire plate. Unfortunately, many of the birds (particularly the raptors) are in vertical format, which, while giving a more natural-looking appearance for the combined "bird plus text" display, means that the full screen version of each bird has less than half the content of the original plate. It would have been well worth the trouble to have made all these pictures scrollable, as indeed has been done, of necessity, for the text portions.
The text is extensive and contains the species numbers and names as given by Gould. Many of these have been changed subsequently, but the current common name is included in the toolbar for each species. However, it is disappointing that there is no facility for printing out the information.
The toolbar gives access to all the major components of the program, including help, the main book, the biography, the maps of Gould's travels and a full text search facility. The popup menu includes a very useful Choose species listing of the common names of all the described birds.
The introduction to the program and one of the illustrated birds (the Shorttailed Shearwater) provide the tantalising addition of bird sounds to the repertoire. Further examples would have been much appreciated.
Conclusion
Despite the limitations I have outlined, this CD-ROM is of good quality and will be popular amongst keen bird enthusiasts and admirers of John Gould's Australian works.
Link:
http://www.protoavis.com.au/gould.htm
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Reprinted from the March 1997 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
