Microsoft Encarta is a Encyclopedia on a CD ROM that is intended for a diverse audience including children and novice users. Finding a topic of interest in a voluminous collection of information can be a difficult task for even the most experienced computer user. Fortunately, the Encarta designers developed some innovative methods for presenting the search feature.

Encarta lets you conduct several different types of search, such as a search for a place name or multimedia file. If you select a Category search, Encarta displays an "Area of Interest" list, that includes such topics as History, Geography, etc. When you select an item in this list, Encarta displays the categories for that Area of Interest. Selecting a category will further reduce the list of Article titles. In figure 1 there are 312 articles in the category Mammals.

Figure 1

With the Encarta place search (figure 2) you can find an article by first selecting either Regions, Countries, Political Subdivisions or Cities. You can then scroll or find an entry in the list of places. clicking a place name with show a list of all the Articles about that place. In figure 2 there are 231 Articles about the Middle East.  

Figure 2

You can also find articles by historic period. Rather than entering dates in fields, Encarta lets you click an drag the mouse pointer to select a date range. This action will display a list of articles about the events that occurred within the selected time range.

Figure 3 shows the results of a compound search that was based on the search for articles about the Middle East (figure 2) and the time line selection in figure 3. This search yielded  five articles about the Middle East for the period of 1164 to 1626.

Figure 3